Strange Bedfellows
by Reno Spiegel
Summary: ...because every day is more interesting inside ShinRa than out.
1. First Day Out

**Author's Note: **There really is no explanation for the existence of this story, aside from the fact that something you'll catch onto popped into my head and I thought, "I wanna write a story that always starts like that. Like Groundhog Day, just. . .legitimately possible! It'll be like the Turk Parties!" So that's why I'm typing this. It'll follow no major update schedule; it's like a. . .situation-dramedy, really, just from the eyes of ShinRa and in the writing style of yours truly, Reno fuckin' Spiegel. Enjoy the show. ( All chapters will be song titles. Hurrah! )

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Strange Bedfellows: First Day Out

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Her name was Elena. It's not exactly a common name around Midgar, and everyone knows how that name is taken, so, before you have to ask yourself, yes, she was the Turk. That's probably also a tip-off that she was blonde, about five-foot-four, and weighed. . .well, it was appropriate for that height. If followed the news during the AVALANCHE massacre, you would have known her face down to a tee, as it was plastered all over the television and papers.

She was born and raised in Costa del Sol, which made sense considering her lightly tanned skin during her first few weeks of the job. After that, she'd just gotten too busy to go back home. Being a Turk had that effect on a person; their social life went down the tube.

A tall, lanky man paced in front of her as she stood in his office, trying to look as straight into the wall as humanly possible. He looked her up and down in that way that said he was evaluating, not looking for someone to be his child's mother. "Cadet Simms," he snapped.

Her response was instinct through repetition by now; her hand flew to her forehead and she barked, "Sir!" She'd come from SOLDIER Second Class to the seventieth floor on a sudden command. Assuming she was going to be ordered out for some violation or another, her things were packed on her bunk and awaiting her. The other woman cadet in SOLDIER had been out all day and Elena thought that, perhaps, they were cutting them loose as an inconvenience thing.

She thought that wasn't the case, though, when she walked in and saw a table against the wall with three men behind it. One was a definite Wutain with beautiful black hair that fell below his soldiers and a cool, calm composure. On his left was a stoic bald man with sunglasses on and maybe five piercings in each ear and a small goatee, right leg crossed over his left. His hands were flat on the table and he looked very respectable. Left farther was a man with red hair, looking much more casual than the other two; his bandaged leg was on the table, his right arm was in a sling, and he was sipping loudly at a soft drink in his free hand. In front of them all were buzzers; for what purpose, she wasn't sure.

"Cadet Simms, do you know what the title of Turk fully entails?" the man asked her firmly, but not in an overbearing way. He was more like a stern father with a lesson to teach.

Elena's heart leapt into her throat. Those men were Turks; she had seen that by their blue suits. She could also tell that they were watching her reactions, responses, and very breath to the finest detail. Where she put her feet when she talked, how many breaths she took before answering, if she seemed to blink rapidly when asked a question. . .they were all being evaluated, and she could feel it. There was only one thing that meant. She was going to get every SOLDIER's dream offered to her. "Not completely, Sir, but I gather the gist of it."

The Wutain shifted, making his chair creak. Elena felt the sweat bead on her forehead, and she swallowed without trying to look like she was. She forced every muscle into retracting that sweat. The interrogator puffed his cigar, and suddenly the room was stifling hot. "Would you," he said slowly, "please tell the trio and I what it is you know about the Turks, precisely?"

She answered immediately: "They are generally sent to retrieving company property and dealing with faulted business deals involving said company, Sir. If needed, they also provide a task force and are greatly skilled in hand-to-hand as well as long-range combat." She breathed, and then saw a mistake. "S – Sir."

Another chair creaked, but it was too far to the left for Elena's fixed eyes to see. She would have glanced over, but she knew they were watching every inch of her; undressing her with their eyes, so to speak. She swallowed again, hoping that stutter wouldn't make too much of a difference. They had to know how nerve-wracking this was – they'd been recruited once, too, right?

"Cadet Simms, no need for so many formalities." He didn't sound overly stern about it, but she wasn't about to drop her posture. "For the most part, you're correct about the basic responsibilities of the Turks, but there are a few details missed, such as –"

"Sir, if I may." It was the soft voice of the Wutain man, which was the only mouth Elena could see. The tall man stepped backward with a brief nod and the other took his place, pacing along his very line. "Your rank and specialty, Miss Simms?"

She tried not to look as interested in him as she was; this is when counting the tiles on the walls was a very handy practice. "Cadet in SOLDIER Second Class, specializing in support weaponry and Materia, Sir."

"I see." He exchanged a look with his comrades, who were basically unreadable, but there must have been some silent communication. The bald man moved nothing at all and the redhead continued to suck on his straw annoyingly. Elena didn't know if this was an endurance test or if he was just damned annoying. "Cadet Simms, you're right about the Turks. We do exclusively work for ShinRa, Incorporated and will never work for anyone else until our retirement." He smiled. "Then we'll probably be too old to do much at all. Regardless, we do all of the aforementioned and a bit more; see, we negotiate hostage situations, ransoms, and kidnappings."

The bald man tapped his buzzer and the president nodded. "What side we're on is all speculation, Cadet," he chipped in. She respected his honesty, but it was something she certainly hadn't wanted to hear at a. . .what was this? A press conference?

"Now, now," the Wutain chuckled. "Let's not scare the poor girl off before she gets a full chance. Miss Simms, are you romantically involved with anyone at the moment, be they boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, or wife?"

She started. "No, Sir. But I –"

The red hair man's foot came down on his buzzer, hard. It was actually hard enough to keep the button stuck down, and his bald friend was forced to try popping it back up as he said, "Any known allergies?" The bald man finally got the buzzer shut off, but his companion didn't seem to care. He just chewed his straw and nodded to some silent music.

"Milk," she replied, but didn't feel obligated to call him Sir. Half of her mind said it would look awkward if there were just two Turks and they'd picked up a bum for this. The other half said to be careful around that one.

"Who the hell's allergic to milk anymore?" she heard him mutter, but the man with all the earrings tapped his buzzer again. "Do you have any distinct phobias? Distinct may be defined as a major health hazard if forced into them."

She thought for a moment, still keeping her eyes locked on that spot on the wall. She was afraid of Midgar Zoloms, but you were crazy if you weren't. She remembered being afraid of small spaces when she was young, but she'd had a reason. "No, Sir."

They paused for a moment, which was long enough for the redhead to light something. She didn't know it was him for a fact, but she didn't really think anyone else in the room would just light a smoke. The man who seemed to be in charge of all this looked disapprovingly that way, but she wasn't sure if he put it out. One glance away from the wall and she thought they might take this from her.

"Cadet Simms," said the bald man. "Are you aware of what deserters of the Turks are punished with?" When she said no, she didn't – it was an honest answer, but she had a feeling she didn't need three guesses – he stood up and walked over to her. Digging into an inside pocket on his suit for a moment, he came up with a photograph that made Elena want to hurl.

A man who had presumably been a Turk at one time or another was nailed to a pole by his hands, about twenty feet in the air. Someone had set fire to the bottom and it seemed to be slowly creeping up, toward this man's legs. The cruelty hadn't stopped at the nailing and fire, though; they'd cut his legs off at the kneecaps so he couldn't even defend himself. She tried to focus on the white border of the photo, but at the very bottom was a man with a gas can – a tall, bald man that looked to be indifferent to the whole thing as he poured more on.

He put the picture away with the same careless expression. "That is, of course, the worst case scenario. Poor Mac there had tried to leave on a mission. Generally, you put in your two month's notice, and when your time is up, we let you go after I've smashed your fingers and toes with a ball-peen hammer." Elena hoped her expression didn't give away her fear. "I'm not smiling, Cadet, because this is no joke. The Turks aren't just an organization, not just a team – the Turks are a lifetime commitment and you'd better be ready to accept the consequences if you join."

"Are you?" asked the Wutain, without missing a beat, and walked over to her. None of them smiled. The first man's face was twisted in a grim expression of understanding, the redhead was still smoking and appeared to have ADD, as he was following a fly with his face, but the two men in front of her had eyes that seeped into her soul. "This was, of course, just an offer. Should you leave now, there will be no punishment. You will go back to your cot, say nothing to your fellow cadets, live your life as you would have originally, and we find another replacement. If you accept now. . .you're in for good."

Her mind raced. From the redhead smoking and looking casual – bum, Turk, employee? – to the photograph – superimposed, reality, associate? – to the two men staring her down – full-blooded Turks – she was being fed information far too fast. She'd been called to the office to be asked into the Turks, she knew that, but they'd done a rapid-fire interrogation and shown her a picture of shadenfreude in its finest hour. Three trained killers were waiting for an answer that would take her life down a different path. She knew that. But at the same time, she knew that SOLDIER had its benefits as well.

The Wutain's eyebrow twitched, and she didn't know whether it was an itch he was too sophisticated to scratch or if he was giving her an impatient look. Either way, it spurred forth from her mouth what she knew was the right decision:

". . .I accept."

The interrogator pulled out and chewed a cigar, nodding. He stepped in front of her again, peering between the heads of his task force members. "Cadet Simms, as Head Employer of ShinRa Electric, Incorporated, I hereby instate you with the title of Turk Trainee. Your training will last one week and then, if passed, you will be a full-fledged Turk." He reached out toward the pocket of her uniform and pinned something there. Upon looking down – she felt safe doing that now – she saw it was a badge of the company's logo, engraved with a small T. "That will get you anywhere in the building that you need, Miss Simms." He turned. "Gentlemen, I trust you to shut down the office when she is ready." With a solid nod, he walked out of the office via the balcony, where a helicopter hummed in wait.

The Wutain extended his hand. "Now that the privacy is unneeded, my name is Tseng Lander, captain of the Turks. This," he said, nodding to the man beside him, "is Rudolph Hurst, better known as Rude. He normally doesn't like making speeches. And our oh-so-sophisticated peer," he announced, raising his voice, "is Reno Drannor, my second-in-command, who you are replacing."

"And she," the redhead called, still smoking, "is only a temporary replacement. Give me two weeks and we can skin her alive." He seemed more than a little bitter about this whole thing to Elena. Rightfully so, she supposed; he'd just watched himself be replaced, however temporary it may be.

Rude walked over toward him in a way that said 'I'm gonna bludgeon you now,' but all he did was take a cigarette from the open pack on the table and light it. Elena was kind of disappointed; she had a feeling that this Rude fellow could really pop heads open like melons and would feel absolutely no remorse for it. Either that or he was a big softie. She wasn't sure. Turks were pretty unreadable.

"Elena, you're welcome to relax any time you'd like." Tseng smiled at her the way the other two never would, and she felt compelled to drop her stiff stance and lean casually on one leg. "If you're thinking that this is all a publicity stunt to make the Turks look gender-acceptant" – it hadn't occurred to her, really – "don't worry. We run strictly on statistics, records, and loyalty. Besides, we're generally a pretty air-tight organization outside the building, and our public appeal doesn't truly matter to us."

Reno scoffed around his cigarette then pulled it out. "Don't humor her too much, Boss. We were a pretty secret, covert team, but since that Sector Seven Pillar shit and the Prez gettin' whacked, the Turks got blown as wide open as a three-gil crack whore. You coulda gotten hired onto a team that worked without hassle and got paid for it, but now the world knows we exist and you're gonna take a lotta shots. Don't expect an easy time around town these days – if you thought the slums were bad, try strollin' through in a blue suit with a gun and intent to kill. That's some rough shit." He replaced his cigarette, done with that conversation.

The Wutain clapped once. "Enough. We're supposed to be out of the office as soon as possible, which leaves us to what Rude and I discussed in the elevator."

Reno's head perked up. Elena knew that feeling; he'd been left out of something that most certainly pertained to him, and that wasn't good. Something had gone down, he was out of the loop, and that probably meant that it was going to do him over.

"Seeing as how we've yet to secure a home for a trainee – understandable, I assume, seeing as how this is very short notice – then living conditions should be decided for the next week of training. Rude and I have come to the decision that you, Miss Simms, will be staying the next week with Reno." He nodded firmly, as if to say "No backtalk."

The sloppy Turk slammed his foot down on his buzzer again, leg apparently not too hurt to be slung around, but the power had been cut on those. His neck jerked about for a moment before he yelled out, "Why?!"

Tseng composed himself, which wasn't too much of a stretch. "Reno, let me say this simply. I, as captain of the Turks, cannot trust such a new member around my private documents. Rude, as a very personal and large man, cannot have someone so new running around his house at will. And you, Reno, as the one being replaced, own a trashy apartment with two bedrooms because you like to think you're as successful as a three-gil crack whore." He smiled softly, but there was some pleasure in this behind those eyes. "Thus, you will be housing Elena for the week. I do believe you can go that long without company, and if not, then perhaps you're well enough to be sent on a timed hike to Icicle Inn. Is this clear?"

He didn't look too pleased with it, but he muttered something that sounded like a resignation and pitched his cigarette at Rude, who caught it and crushed it in his palm. "If she breaks one thing – one fucking toothpick, Tseng – she's out and she can find her own damn place." He stood up slowly and hobbled over to them.

Elena looked around at them with a bit of hesitation. "If this is just gonna be one big inconvenience, I coul –"

Suddenly, she heard a click. She glanced back and forth, feeling the pressure of a gun barrel at the back of her neck, breaking into a cold sweat. Tseng and Rude were impassive, even demanding – of what, she didn't know. Reno suddenly spoke up, coldly, from behind the barrel: "This is what happens to inconveniences. If you were an inconvenience. . .heh, you wouldn't know it right now. But you can be one. Say one wrong thing, put one toe the wrong way outta line, and you can be one. And I promise you, I won't mind having to. . ." The gun cocked, but then he pulled it away from her head, pulled the trigger to fire the blank at the wall, and holstered it. "Apartment key's under the building's welcome mat, Rookie. ShinRa Housing Systems, right next door. Says my name on it."

The other two Turks held no silent apology for her in their eyes as he turned and left the office. No, what was there was grim understanding – and truth. If she screwed up, the next one out of the chamber wouldn't be a blank. She could be Mac the deserter and have to dangle on the pole.

She swallowed as hard as she could, calming the bile rising in the back of her throat at the vivid image of dangling twenty feet off the ground and watching her own legs burn to crisps while these three men poured more gas on and took bets to see how long it would be before she screamed. She breathed out, as if she'd just said that to them all on one breath, and nodded. "Right."

Rude gave a look at Tseng that was unreadable – who could read a man that didn't show his eyes to them? – and followed Reno out. The Wutain quickly locked the outside doors, turned on the alarm system, and ushered her out to finish the process. He pulled a key from his belt, turned a lock on the staircase, and the floors shifted to seal the office off. A quick turn and he was facing her again, half-smiling.

"We need to work on the attitude, toughen you up a bit. But you'll come along nicely." He flipped her a wave as he passed her by, telling her she had the rest of the day to do absolutely whatever she wanted before disappearing around the corner, murmuring about something or other.

She figured that was the first time she grinned wildly, croaked in her throat, and tried not to fly down the rest of the stairs. A Turk! She was a goddamned Turk! And she would be working with Ts – . . .Turks! Elena looked around as if she were afraid someone had heard that, straightened herself, and walked to the elevator in a giddy schoolgirl daze.

She got into the elevator with her legs feeling weak, actually quite surprised at herself. This really wasn't like her. Still, when the doors slipped shut and she was the only one riding, she let her forehead hit the wall and a small groan slip through her lips to the effect of, _"My goooooooood, Tseng!"_

Anyone watching her would have clicked his or her tongue and said, "So unprofessional."

Rufus ShinRa, in a temporary office, did just that. He had microphone access to the entire building, and might have warned her on any better of a day for his malice that Palmer had just been crying to himself and beating off in there. However, the blonde was just in a really shit mood and didn't think seeing a reaction to even that was going to make it better.

If you knew Rufus, you knew that screwing with him in a mood like this was just off the platform that fell anywhere near considerable. No, you were best off keeping clear of him on a day like this, when his office was being used as a set in some kind of play and he hadn't had his coffee.

Every rule has an exception, though, and therefore everyone's limits have an exception of a certain person. Even if tampering with Rufus was like taking fifty wires on a bomb and snipping a few at random, one person could cut through that line, and that was just because his job said to.

War General Randolph Heideggar.

Heideggar knew that no one particularly favored his company, and he knew why. He was large, had a short fuse, and laughed a lot. Probably the worst thing anyone ever did was let him know these were the reasons he was so disrespected among the higher-ups, because now he had a tendency to think he was absolutely imperative for the company and used those annoyances to his advantage. The fact he had his own chairs made – actually, they were made for Palmer and no one had the nerve to tell him that – was enough convincing for him.

"Gya ha ha," he coughed. He rocked back on the reinforced legs of his chair happily. "Rufus, that's our newest Turk. What say we go demote her right under Tseng's nose and show that coward what real authority is?"

Rufus rubbed at his forehead, wondering briefly just how much legal trouble he would get in for shooting Heideggar where he sat. "Now, now," he said softly, "let's not jump on the gun." He smiled. "We both know the drawing power of our fellow employee, Tseng. Let's give her the week at least. If she just seems to be dead weight with a foolish crush, you and Rude can have your ways with her."

Through his beard, the general grinned widely as he stood, chair creaking. "Anyone else she latched onto and she wouldn't even be here. You just wanna see if she's a threat." His grin widened and his head tipped back. "Gya ha ha ha! Putting your relationship to the test and exploiting company resources, are you, boy?! Putting your father's name to sha --"

Something could cheer Rufus up that day, it was decided as Heideggar fled his mock office, a sizable hole in the back of his pants and being pursued by a loping panther named Dark Nation. The president's laugh followed them as well, all the way to the elevator. Heideggar got the door shut before the animal could catch him, then turned around and collapsed, panting, against the wall.

He did a double-take, and then promptly screamed,** "PALMER, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!!**"


	2. This Town

**Author's Note: **Song credit for this round to the fabulous Frank Sinatra. Last chapter's was Insane Clown Posse/Twiztid. Can we say gear shift? The amount of perspective changing in here will probably give you a headache, but buck up and deal.

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**Strange Bedfellows: This Town**

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". . .I can't believe this."

Reno knew his mornings, and when that was the first complete sentence of one, the day was going to be full of repetitions.

It was 6:24 A.M. He had a broken arm and a leg torn to grotesque shreds beneath the bandages. His coffee maker burbled loudly on the kitchen counter, a noise akin to that of a dying hobo. The rookie hadn't bothered him at all last night; into her room without questions, chatter, or insults. Her door was still locked. Overall, it was a generally average morning. He would go to work in half an hour and start his early morning desk jobs they'd stuck him with.

But, average as it was, he couldn't just overlook what was in his bathroom garbage can atop disposable razors, hairballs from the brush, and old cans of deodorant.

". . .A fucking tampon."

He didn't know when the offending item had arrived in his apartment, but it wasn't exactly a matter for the detectives of the city. He certainly would have noticed it had it been there the day before. Had there been blonde hair in his brush, he would have noticed that, too. But what baffled him was how she had gotten past him to do _anything_. He'd been sitting there doing paperwork all night.

Trash can balanced at an angle between his good knee and the toilet seat, his back against the wall, his good hand did him the favor of giving him a cigarette, which he verbally thanked it for. Since his injuries, his limbs had taken on their own intentions, and they were good so far. Who knew what would happen if he didn't show he appreciated it?

His mind wandered back to this – this stupid little thing in his garbage can. His coffee was boiling. As was his blood. Inhale. Exhale. Smoke rings. It was a distraction. He wondered if this thing had just been tossed in there to fuck with him. Like a silent partner, his hand reached out the mag-rod he always had and tapped it about.

Nope. Definitely not a decoy. She was raggin' and he was getting the bitter results.

He debated calling Tseng and asking for an Associate Homicide Permit, but he knew that beauty-sleep-loving asshole wasn't only asleep, but he probably had company and would dock the redhead's pay for interrupting sleep time next to that vanilla blonde cocker.

"Faggoty Wute."

He decided that was enough to sedate his bloodlust for the time being and went to get himself a cup of coffee, turning off the light as he did. He was almost afraid the tool of femininity would come out and bite his dick off or something equally sexist.

He glanced down into his coffee, realized just how sexist, racist, and just all-around pissy he was being, and told himself to knock it off before he got to the office. He had a building reputation to keep up – it wasn't all that bad, really – and he intended to do so.

He also realized he'd only shaved half of his face and knew that that was surely not the way to uphold said public persona.

Reno sighed, trudged into the bathroom once more, flipped on the light, and that beast from the land down under glared at him from the top of spent three-blades, begging to be investigated a bit more. He kindly flipped it off – or else that was his hand's contribution to the fight, it was getting a bit hard to tell anymore – and went about cleaning himself up, filling the sink with water as he did.

"Reno," the stupid thing said flatly. "What are –"

He thrust down into the water, forehead clashing with the porcelain at the bottom and making a fresh wound. Reno watched the clouded bottom of the sink with that deranged interest kind of mindset, convinced he was going crazy but not quite sure being face down in a sink full of water was remotely near the bottom of his Smart Things to Do list.

A sudden jerk on his ponytail brought the back of his head against the running faucet, and his vision blinked white, grey, transparent, okay again. The jerk released and he felt the bottom of the sink again, the water turning an unripe tomato color.

For some reason, he found this to be the funniest thing since the story of Heideggar's sail into the elevator at the bar last night. Therefore, he inhaled a good amount of water as he laughed about it, impassively noting he was banging his head all over the inside of the sink and could die from many causes in such a position.

One firm pull and suddenly the world was full of that funny air stuff again. He unplugged the sink and retched into it around his amusement for a good five minutes until the water had expelled itself and he could breathe regularly again. Damn, drowning and concussing himself in one fell swoop had potentials of hilarity.

He looked up into the mirror, saw what a bloodied-up state he was in, then saw Elena in the mirror, looking awfully pale. He suddenly remembered she was funny, too, and swung around quickly as his roars restarted. Her head bobbed up and down as his eyes wiggled into focus and warm liquid trickled down his neck from all sides.

Elena's eyes widened and she realized she must have driven him absolutely crazy, or else she needed to go find the medication he, in actuality, wasn't taking.

Her employer raised a shaking finger at her and stabbed her in the chest with it, still hooting and howling about this entire spectacle. "Aha! Simms, you bitch, you – ha ha heh! – you lied to – ha ha ha! – three men with guns!" He began to double over. "There's a hickey under that – ha ha ha! – fuckin' turtleneck!!" He hit the floor in a sore pile, but it was damned funny in his warped mind. "Hoo boy!" he exclaimed when he'd finally found his footing again, swaggering out the door with the injuries gone from his mind. "Lock up, you home-wrecker!" Another burst of laughter sailed through the shutting door.

The fact that her comrade had just tried to drown himself for some reason, it was only 6:45 in the morning, and he'd apparently been watching her sleep to have seen that hickey on her neck hit her all at once. She knew this was either going to be a very strange friendship or wasn't going to be one at all.

Half an hour later, Reno was sprawled out on his desktop in tears, and his bald friend had removed his gun and mag-rod much earlier. Rude watched the crazy, laughing pile that was once his best friend with a wary eye. It moved to the opening door and landed on their newest member, who was followed by their boss. He went back to his papers with a grunt.

Elena stopped as soon as she was in the office, staring at Reno's shaking shoulders and hearing his whimpers of pained, uproarious joy. "Still laughing?" she asked him, but received no response except a bark of a chuckle and then another stream of the heavy stuff.

Their Wutain leader brushed her aside, walked over to Reno's desk, and slammed his fist down on it. "Reno. My office. Five minutes ago."

Reno dragged himself from his seat and swayed into Tseng's office before the man himself made it in, collapsing against the desk in giggles. As the Wutain shut the door, Reno stopped laughing abruptly, but his face was beet-red. "Tseng, I want her gone."

Tseng settled himself into his chair and started a pot of coffee before seeming to acknowledge Reno's existence. "I understand why you're so bitter about all of this, Reno, but you have to know how much we need a replacement right now. You're out of work for at least three weeks and we have an actual war on our hands right now. It's not a matter of want, it's a matter of need."

Reno's good hand hit the desk. "I don't care what we need – Tseng, I woke up and found a tampon in my trash can!" It was about then that he realized how feeble his argument really was. ". . .And that was only the first night," he added.

The other laughed. "Obviously you've never had a woman for more than one night."

"Like you'd know; always banging the president of the company to keep your slate clean." He scratched at his neck. "That's the only reason you're so damn indispensable around here. You keep Rufus happy."

His employer brushed his hair over his shoulder with a more serious expression. "I really wish you'd give him a chance. Yes, he can be a bit frustrating around the workplace. Yes, our relationship is somewhat of a public secret because of what it entails. But Rufus is easily one of the best people I've met, and I really wish you could see that."

"Tseng to Planet, please come in," Reno exclaimed. "I'm not looking for some ultra-mushy fairy tale of your love for your boyfriend. I'm glad you're happy, I'm glad he's pleased, but we're talking about the rookie. She was in my apartment maybe twelve hours and she already pissed me off."

He smiled. "And you've every right to kick her out whenever you want, but, as you agreed to, she's in the Turks for at least a week and there's no avoiding her once you come into the office. And I see your gears turning; if you injure yourself further to miss work, she, as the one least busy and needing a few tests, will be over to take care of you. Would you like to leave me to my work and wash the blood out of your hair now?"

Reno made a whimpering noise. "There's a hickey on her neck! . . .It's fresh!" he tried.

"Out, Reno."

He had no choice but to obey, standing and shuffling out with his head down. Rude said nothing as he crossed the main office to the bathroom, but did follow him in, standing against the closed door and watching as Reno patched himself up.

"Rookie's killin' me," he groaned, wincing as the blood was shifted and an actual cut was found. He would go down to the infirmary after they were done in here. "Why can't it just be how it was?"

Rude quirked a brow. "I remember saying that to Tseng when you joined on." He inspected his fingernails, prying some dirt out from under them. "Tried drowning yourself in the sink over a woman again?"

The redhead turned on the faucet with a squeal and started washing his face. "That predictable?"

"After so long with you, I just like to think I've picked up on your mannerisms. That and you're running out of ideas."

Rude had been watching the highs and lows of his friend since he'd joined on the previous year. So far there had been three alcohol poisonings, eight mock-suicide attempts, and a lawsuit from a security guard who claimed she'd been violated. When Reno had jumped up in the courtroom and shouted, "That's not what you said the next morning!" he'd gotten off with six months probation and a letter of apology.

The fact that he thought it was hilarious had automatically endeared him to Reno. Since about the third week of the redhead's membership, they hadn't been far apart. "Well, let's get down to the infirmary before I pass out or something." Reno gargled the taste of blood-water out of his mouth and they went back into the office.

Rude decided not to mention that Elena seemed to be nowhere in sight and held open the door for his comrade.

In actuality, once Reno had been out of sight, Tseng had called her into his office and hadn't said a word to her in the three minutes she'd been sitting there. He'd just poured her a cup of coffee, connected his computer to the rest of the company members', made a call to the housing manager to have Mr. Drannor's water turned off for a week, and then sat staring at his hands for a good twenty seconds.

Elena almost turned toward the door when she heard the main one shut, but that was apparently Tseng's cue, as he said, "Miss Simms – sorry, Elena – how was your first night at Reno's apartment?" He paused. "Rather, would you like another place to stay tonight?"

The thought of him asking her to share his apartment was intriguing, but then she remembered why she hadn't been able to in the first place and knew he wouldn't. She made a small shrugging motion. "It was alright, but I think he wants me to go. You saw what he was like this morning; if I'm having that negative of an effect on him, I'd rather stay somewhere else."

His fingers clenched the desktop and he looked ready to say something before calming himself down and starting over. He had come very close to telling her not to be so damned kind, then had decided against it. They were Turks; it was their own fault if they got shot for being too naive. "Trust me, his current state is not all your fault. Reno is a very precise person, even if he doesn't seem like it, you know?"

Elena took a drink of her coffee, then furrowed her brows and shook her head. "I don't follow."

"Let me put it this way." Their leader sighed, and then thought about the way he wanted to put it. "Say you have two men in a room. In front of each of them is a cube on a table. Each man reaches to the other's cube and moves it as much as the other man. The first man moves his back, while the second man shoots the first, takes both cubes, and arranges them neatly." He drew all this out with his finger. "The first man is the general public, while the second man suffers from a medical condition called. . .oh, I forget the name right now, but Reno suffers from it. It causes overreactions to almost all minor occurrences, mainly adjustments to habitat. Otherwise, the second man is a perfectly normal human being with a small chemical imbalance differing only slightly from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. No medication. Just caution from everyone around him. You follow now?"

She nodded honestly. "I've heard of it now that you say that."

"That's how it usually is." He nodded and hit a few keys on his computer. "A good man, just with a bad intention once in a while. Just do what he says and everything will be fine. Did you see that side office with the documents on the table next to mine?" When she nodded, he said, "Your task for the day is to organize those by alphabetical headings. Don't worry if you don't finish now; you have all week for your assignments, and overtime if needed. Ask Rude if you need any help."

She nodded and left the office, closing the door at his request, and Tseng was as alone as usual. Maybe not so much usual as general. Outside the office, his life was taken up by a frustrated blonde boy too wise beyond his years for this Planet. He'd grown up far too fast in too short of a time span – perhaps he'd gone to Tseng to reassurance, or maybe it was r–

His computer buzzed annoyingly and an envelope icon appeared in the corner. "Ah," he muttered, clicking on it. Immediately a new window opened with a list of participants on the side – S. Chassity, R. Heideggar, J. Hojo, T. Lander, A. Palmer, R. ShinRa, E. Reeve – and they all greeted him at once.

He smiled. Even the executives of the most powerful company on the Planet needed a chat room.

The first on that list of participants had absolutely nothing to do. In fact, she was sitting in her office, feet on a desk strewn with ideas for new weaponry, filing her nails into claws. There was no real constructive purpose in this, but it made for a good scare tactic if anyone came into the office.

"Mrs. Chassity," her receptionist called, smiling at her in only the way he could. "You have a call on line six."

"Remember, the Mrs. is pending." She inspected her nails, clacked them on the desk in an appreciative fashion once, and then looked at the computer. Indeed, they were all reaming into Palmer for yesterday's activities and he was defending himself. Badly. "Who is it? Marcus from the cleaners?"

The young man at the desk, Cero, nodded briefly and readjusted his headset. "Mhm. Says your good suit is done and you can come pick it up anytime, but wants to talk to you about the company tab that's running itself too high for casualty."

"Oh?" Scarlet's eyebrow lifted itself. She certainly hadn't been over-abusing the company tab. . .anyone under the fifty-fifth floor didn't even know they had one. . .and everyone had turned in their expenses to be added up. But she remembered that there seemed to be a good thousand gil more a month unaccounted for for a long while now. She'd passed it off as a mistake, but. . .she also recalled that the Turks never batted an eye at the accounting meetings and damned if they knew how to dry-clean. Well, Tseng had a college friend at the cleaner's to do it for free, but otherwise. . . "Put him through," she said sternly, picking up the phone.

A moment later, the familiar voice of Marcus Duchene filtered through, above the loud radio always on at Sector Six Cleaners. "Scarlet?" he asked hesitantly.

She knew his cheery mood was just there in case someone else picked up. She smirked and filed a nail, then said, "Hello, Marcus," and held the phone a good foot away from her ear.

"Scarlet. . .you know I have all due respect for you. . .but what the hell is going on with the ShinRa tab?!! These two lackeys keep coming in with Lander, saying to put it on the tab, but their fees always seem to be missing when we get our check from ShinRa!! Is this some corp bullshit that we don't get because we're small business owners or am I gonna have to send out a squad to get some heads?!!"

"Marcus, dear, I do hope you understand that these are trained killers." She held her nails up in front of her face. "And I also hope you understand that I am in no way legally bound to the boys and will not be taking responsibility for what may happen to you. If you'd like to let me handle it, my receptionist is heading down toward their offices as we speak." Cero obeyed the jerking finger motion and did so. "My suit is ready, you said?"

She wasn't sure if what she heard was genuine calm, but she didn't exactly care about Marcus' mental health. Finding a new dry-cleaner was easy, and if he did come after Reno and Rude, there was no way he would be going back to work. "Yeah. You coming to pick it up now?"

"May as well," she replied, clacking her nails on the desk again. "Though I hate to miss a minute of this oh-so-exciting desk work. Give me half an hour. I'm sure I can find someone to drive over there with me." She hung up without another word, grunting at how anal Duchene was getting to be – perhaps she should just let the boys sort him out. They'd been stealing from the tab for years and he'd only recently started to care.

She logged out of the chat room after making some nonsense remark at Reeve, gathered her things, and left the office. The weapons specialist wandered the halls for a while, never too busy nor too empty, and after giving up on finding someone particularly touchy to take with her, she surrendered to the Turks' offices. Cero was inside when she opened the door.

Yes, Cero was inside.

Cero was also tied to a large, spinning pottery wheel and had, from the looks of things, vomited on himself.

"Reno, dear," she called to the man watching all of this transpire, overlooking the bandage around his head. In actuality, Rude and Tseng were also watching, but the redhead was the only one who was outright engrossed. "Where ever did you find a pottery wheel?"

He thumbed toward a door that said **KEEP OUT** and she saw the doorknob and deadbolt had been decimated. "It's like a warehouse. All kinds'a shit in there. Arsenic, tranquilizer guns, table saws, riot gear, _anti_-riot gear, sex toys, the works. We never bothered to check it before, but we're on our annual cleaning spree, what with the rookie and all."

The blonde woman totally ignored Cero's pleas for help and went into this magical room. Reno hadn't exaggerated – the place was huge. She had seen it in the building blueprints, but with seventy floors, she hadn't really paid it any attention. A squint toward the back wall told her that there were a few vehicles in there as well.

Reno kept throwing things at his captive until Scarlet returned from the storage area and tapped him on the shoulder. "Reno," she repeated, "would you be so kind as to accompany me to Sector Six Cleaners? You obviously have nothing else to do."

He debated that. He could sit here spinning Cero around and start throwing coffee at him. He could go shout at Elena. He could go outside and have a smoke or two. He could go bother Tseng about his relationship. He could. . . Reno's brow perked at the glint of something in her pocket. She nodded with a grin. He shouted at Tseng he would be back in an hour, not to let the spinning man go, and allowed himself to be led from the building by a lapel.

On the way to the cleaners, there wasn't much conversation. Scarlet was one of those drivers that could fool around with an entire platoon and still never miss a stop sign, which was a good thing; Reno was a workout. They got the suit, tossed it in the front seat, and Reno climbed in the back. Once they'd reached the ShinRa parking garage, they found an inconspicuous spot and Scarlet climbed back with him.

Reno smirked, bemused, as Scarlet pulled a bar out from between the car seat cushions and used her newly-acquired handcuffs to immobilize her fellow employee.

This was such a frequent occurrence that, as soon as Elena had popped her head out of the side office to ask what Reno had run off so quickly for, Rude mumbled, "They're nymphos, Rookie. My guess is that the room was too tempting for her."

She was beginning to understand just how they kept their heads on around here.


	3. Coffee and TV

**Author's Note: **For the past few weeks, I've heard nothing from this story but "Update me! Update me! C'mon, Reno, don't you love me enough to update me! C'mon c'mon c'mon, update me, pleeeeeease!" So here's your update, you lovable piece of shit. Song title credit to Blur.

-

**Strange Bedfellows: Coffee and TV**

-

"No way. No _fucking _way."

He looked at today's omen of bad news. It was 5:17 A.M. and he hated his life. He hated every bit of it: he hated his apartment, he hated his job, he hated his best friends, he hated his parents for making him happen, he hated the word hate for telling him how to express displeasure, he hated his dress code, he hated the security guards for calling him "Sir," he hated the thumbprint ID doors for never recognizing him, he hated every last stick of furniture that had supported his shit life.

He hated the way the garbage men didn't get out of the trucks anymore, he hated the huge line at the express lane in the grocery store when he just wanted a fucking cigarette, he hated people more talented than he was, he hated people who had looked down on him through the years, he hated his teachers for blaming their problems on him after class.

He hated Midgar for being so huge, he hated Junon for being by the saltwater he was allergic to, he hated Kalm for being too small, he hated Mideel for kicking him out, he hated Wutai for having shitty beer, he hated Rocket Town because they hated him, he hated Nibelheim for being so mutant, he hated Corel for being so poor, he hated Costa del Sol for being so rich, he hated Cosmo Canyon for being out in the muddle of nowhere, he hated Icicle Inn for being clustered.

H hated the way Heideggar laughed, he hated the way Palmer rocked on his heels and stuffed his fat face at lunch, he hated the way Scarlet's nails grated when she filed them, he hated how nice Reeve way to everyone, he hated almost everything about Hojo, he hated the secretaries because they were all airheads, he hated Tseng for making him work, he hated Rufus for offering him gil he couldn't refuse to work for Tseng, he hated Rude for being so intimidating and making people laugh at the scrawny sidekick he had, he hated Elena for –

He narrowed his eyes. That was it. He hated Elena for _existing_. She touched his things, she apologized, she was invading his territory. It wasn't his fault his life was all fucked up, he told himself, it was the rookie's. No doubt about it; it was her fault that everything went wrong for him and he hated everyone.

Today's Object of Loathe barked at him and pawed affectionately at his hand. "No. No fucking way you're staying here." It barked again, wagging its tail. "That's it!" he yelled. He violently picked the thing up by the ear with his good hand, pretending not to hear its gurgle of displeasure, and hurled it across the living room out the open window.

He tried to calm down as he went about shaving, dressing, brushing his teeth, having some cereal, going back to the bathroom, rinsing the toothpaste out of his mouth with a cry of confusion, and finishing the cereal. He read a few pages from the newspaper, saw someone he recognized in the obituaries, jotted a note to send flowers, and was out the door to work at 7:10. He was a few minutes late getting to the office, but he didn't mind.

Tseng walked in a little while later, balancing a newspaper, briefcase, and cup of coffee, and found him doing his work like a nice little boy, even humming a tune as he did. He was standing there, perplexed, when Rude propped the door the rest of the way open for him. They looked at Reno. They looked at each other. Momentarily forgetting they had a new member and she was nowhere in sight, they shrugged and entered their respective offices with muttered greetings.

About fifteen minutes passed in a weird semi-silence, Reno having done three songs and six papers from his In pile, before Tseng called out, "Reno, when's the last time you got laid?"

"Yesterday, when I went to the cleaners with Scarlet. Why?" he asked, tone indicating he didn't really give a damn about them wanting information about that kind of thing. If he'd been paying more attention, he would have remembered getting punched in the forehead for mentioning a particularly talented secretary on Floor 42.

Their leader looked at the big, bald man in the main room, but Rude was shaking his head. Reno's sex-high kept him occupied for about six hours, eight if she'd left the dress on. Scarlet probably held the record for keeping his mind other places for roughly eleven hours, but that had been the first time and, he'd reported, she was getting less flexible each day. Rude shivered and turned his radio on.

It was about an hour later when Elena stormed in, screamed, "**You fucking bastard!**" and tried to relieve Reno's head of the burden of his body. Rude decided it would be nice of him to walk over and pull her off of his desk, and did so as Tseng was hurrying into the room.

The blonde growled at all of them, and the Wutain asked, "Just what seems to be the problem, Elena?" He quickly took in the haphazard way her suit had been put on and the red marks around her wrists and neck. Something told him Reno hadn't just stolen her blanket.

She fumbled with the bottom of her suit for a moment before pulling it and her shirt up to her neck. Tseng was perhaps the only one in the room whose eyes focused on the scald mark running from the middle of her chest and pooling at her navel. Rude and Reno, on the other hand, were exchanging silent thoughts of how pink frills went very well with black.

The black-haired man didn't have to look far to find the culprit smiling in that irritatingly satisfied way. He walked furiously to Reno's desk and, for the second time in two days, punched it. "Reno, I demand you tell me what the _hell_ you're doing to our new recruit!"

"Don't hit me with that line of shit!" the redhead cried. "You turn your Wute ass around and ask her what the hell she'strying to do to me!" He was standing by now, and his good hand lifted to point at her. "Do you know what she brought into my apartment! Any fucking clue what I woke up to!"

Tseng ground out, "No, I'm not sure."

Reno picked up a mug of coffee and shook it at him, spilling at least half of it onto his white shirt. "I woke up and there was a new coffee machine on the counter – it was shaped like a dog and barked and clawed at you when your coffee was done!" he shouted, hurling the ceramic cup across the office. "I thought maybe I could live with that! So I tried the coffee, and do you know what she did! Do you know what the fuck she did to me, Tseng! She brought _decaf_ into my _fucking apartment!_"

She herself interjected with a shriek of, "And as a result I woke up to find a chloroform rag on my nightstand, my limbs tied to the bedposts, and some weird mechanism dripping scalding coffee onto my tits!" She gestured at her stomach again, which Rude was having a particularly hard time concentrating on.

Tseng was torn. On one hand, he'd warned her about this not a day before, and on the other, he was the employer who had to see to it that his employees got along – or tolerated each other, at the very least. What Reno had done was reasonable considering his condition, but unreasonable considering his position. What Elena had done was reasonable considering who she was and the fact she was just trying to adjust, but unreasonable considering her knowledge of Reno's illness.

The blonde had started raving about it being a gift from her former bunkmate in SOLDIER, sent just the evening before, and how he needed to lighten up and put something fun in his life. His retaliation was that it was his apartment, his window, and hopefully his doorstep that the foreign property had landed on, so it was all legally sound. She answered with a defiant remark about how, obviously, no woman had been able to stand him for more than two days, otherwise he wouldn't freak out over a tampon in the garbage. He replied to this by putting his gun to her forehead, cocking it, and asking her to give him one more reason to blow her away on the spot.

Rude chose this moment to depart to the restroom. There was the fact he didn't want to see how this turned out, combined with the three bottles of water he'd already had. So there was no one at the desk when Tseng looked to it for guidance, but he handled it as well as he could.

The two felt guns to their temples, and Elena had to silently admit he looked damn good when he was about to shoot something. "Reno, if you kill Miss Simms, I will have no choice but to dock your pay. Elena, if you give Reno a reason to kill you, I will not be held legally or financially responsible given the nature of our discussion yesterday, nor will he given his condition. If either one of you turns a foul hand to myself, I will shoot both of you and walk out of the courtroom a free man, I assure you."

There was a long pause, one that would have made the hairs on Cero's neck stand up had he not been freed from the wheel at the end of the workday yesterday. Reno finally stepped back, disarmed his gun, and put it away. "Decaf, rookie," he growled. "If it touches my coffee pot and he doesn't have a gun at my temple, I can't be held responsible." He spit on her shoes for good measure before he left the office for a cigarette.

Another silence passed, and Elena said, "Why do you still have your gun out, sir?"

"Heh," he chuckled. It was amazing that he could turn her from badass to baby without moving an inch. "He's right when he calls you a rookie, you know. I told you no longer than a day ago not to invade his space, and he wakes up to find his coffee maker replaced for a plastic dog. Yes, yes, I understand the sentimental value, but there's one thing you're going to have to make sure you remember in the Turks. Do you know what that is by now?" When she replied that no, she didn't, he told her: "If you're not careful, the last thing you ever do in your life will be to mess with a Turk's coffee."

The two others met on the way from and to the office, and it was silent communication that told Rude to turn and follow his friend. He watched Reno's shoes click angrily against the tile until they were outside and it abruptly gave way to pavement. They stopped as the redhead tried to angrily throw his blazer off, but howled in pain when it involved moving his arm too far and started pacing.

"Lousy bitch," he muttered, jacket hanging off one arm and the other trying to keep his lighter steady enough to ignite his smoke. "Tryin' to move in on my space and put some freakish-lookin' coffee machine dog thing on my fuckin' counter, movin' my coffee for decaf, bleedin' all over my bathroom and leavin' it for me to find, sleepin' in my fuckin' bed and makin' me tie her up 'cause she's some sick maso bitch, what the fuck," he rattled on, inhaling the stick like a box of crackers at one of his college parties.

Rude seriously doubted that last part, but he decided to let his friend have fun. Nothing was ever as amusing when Reno was being accurate, nor articulate for that matter.

"I never fucked you like this, did I, Rude?" he asked, a sound of desperation rising in his throat. "I never invaded your territory and moved so much shit you thought you might have to shoot me, did I? I never put some stupid, bright, animal-shaped coffee pot in your kitchen next to your big, industrial, six-shot-espresso one, did I, Rude!" He was furious by now, but Rude knew he could easily take the younger man if it came down to it.

He walked over to the redhead and laid a hand on his shoulder. "No, Reno, you never moved my coffee machine in those weeks you seem to think I let you touch my _doorstep_." He wasn't entirely surprised to see Reno smile and look reassured at this. That kid was the king of violent mood swings. "Now I'm sure Tseng has had a talk with her; can we go back inside before that car hits us?"

For once in his life, Reno's reaction time paid off. As soon as Rude had dived to the side of the approaching vehicle, he turned his head to see something heading for him. Still in his ever-articulate mood, he described it briefly as this: Loud, black, fast as fuck, low to the ground – chance it, Ace. It was enough encouragement for him. He ran directly at the thing, which only sped up, and bounded off the ground.

He might have cleared the whole thing had his coat still been on. It, however, caught in the back bumper on his way down and, soon afterward, he was very aware of this. With a solid **jerk** sound, he felt himself spin, lurch, fly briefly, and come down with his lower back bent over the trunk of the car, which had screeched to a halt no more than three inches from the building.

Reno felt something broken. Rude grimaced, because he'd heard it break. There was a brief silence, and the pop that came with the opening door was drowned out by an ear-angering, "**OOOOOOW, FUCK!**"

Palmer's elevator masturbation couldn't hold a candle to Reno's hospitalization when it came to bar conversation that night. Not that the fat man minded the lack of attention. He had a feeling Scarlet might even let him drive her around until they beat the dents out of her new car.

He glanced to his side and saw Reeve's eyes narrowed at him, then noticed he was giggling sadistically again. He shut his mouth and tried to look inconspicuous.

Reeve, who rarely drank and was a real jerk when he did, pointed groggily at him and said, "There's sommin'rong withchu." He was rather disappointed at Scarlet's disappearance from their bar, for a few reasons. One, she would have kept him from drinking. Two, because when she didn't, she was his regular ride home. Three, she now had her license suspended and wouldn't have been able to anyway.

Heideggar, who had prayed to Holy that Palmer get hit by a truck for making him see what he had, thought this was some cruel twist of fate and was strangely absent from the office for a few days while he tried to convert.

Scarlet was at the hospital, sitting next to Reno's bed. "You're a bastard, you know," she said softly, stroking the back of his hand. "I get a new car and try to show you the brakes, and you try to show off even with a broken arm. They said your bony ass cost me about two hundred gil of damage. I'd like you to know I stole that from your wallet, so if you're missing it, you know where to come."

The nurse, who had been making the rounds, heard all this and tapped her on the shoulder. "Ma'am, he's been asleep for an hour. I don't think he'll remember that when he wakes up. Maybe you should just come back tomorrow."

The weapons specialist smiled. "No, he'll remember. He's probably awake right now and just wants to see if I'll break down and show my soft side while I think I'm in the clear. He does this in bed all the time to see if I scream someone else's name." He pointed at the edge of his mouth that had just turned up, despite all efforts against it. "See? Men always resort to something sex-related to get what they want."

The nurse fumbled for something to say in response. She just blinked and left the room. It should be randomly noted that she showed up at the very same bar the executives were in no less than twenty minutes after "going home with the flu."


	4. The Great Gig in the Sky

**Author's Note: **I'm really getting irked with _In Stride._ It might shape up to be a decent story, but I like this one a lot more. Problem is, if I focus on this one, I'll put the other off for another two years. C'est la vie, I suppose. This chapter's title brought to you in no part by Pink Floyd, who should have a church.

**Strange Bedfellows: The Great Gig in the Sky**

**- **

"Yes, I can!"

Scarlet shot up in bed, slamming her head against a medicine cabinet and sliding into the gap between her chair and the wall. In an instant, she realized she was still at the hospital and had fallen asleep on her chair sideways.

As the door slammed behind the nurse, she also realized Reno had made it his job to stare up her dress.

She glared at him and kicked the chair at the bed, then stood up and thrust herself back onto it, still in a half-asleep state of mind. She looked down. She glanced up. She mentally raked in the facts: her dress would need some serious dry-cleaning, her hair would need more than a bit of work to get the knots out, and from her partner's sudden look of disgust and the time on the clock, she had been drooling on his leg for about nine and a half hours.

"And what," she continued her mental path without informing him, "was so fucking important that you had to scream at the nurse and do this to me?" She pointed at her dress, then her hair, then wavered back to her dress, then thrust a finger at her hair again. Her priority file was very disorganized.

Reno tried to sit up, then remembered exactly why he was in the hospital and gave up with a groan. "Stupid nurse asked if I wanted a drink. I said yes and she brought me water. I said I wanted a fucking screwdriver."

She decided the source of the argument had been discovered. "To which she replied?"

""Orange juice with vodka, sir?"" He lit a cigarette, surprisingly fast for being so injured. "She said it in that _way_ – you know, the one that says, "In elementary school, I was voted More Likely to Succeed Than Reno Drannor.""

"And you said?" Scarlet wasn't sure why she was so interested in knowing the conversation that had just transpired, but she figured she had to know whether to break more of his bones or not. She refused the offered cancer stick.

The redhead paused a moment, wanting to get this part of it right. He said, quite slowly and deliberately, ""No, you stupid whore, vodka with orange juice and nothing else, dammit."" He smiled in that way only he could and sunk back into the pillows. "Then she said I was an asshole and wouldn't be able to handle alcohol right now, slammed the door shut behind her, and you made an idiot of yourself waking up." He ignored her look. "G'morning, Dear."

There was something about Scarlet's eye twitching that made most people just shut up and let her have her way, but Reno patted her on the head and ashed onto the floor. "If your back wasn't so fucked up already," she snarled, "I'd kick your ass until I broke it again."

Reno was going to say something to that, but the door cracked open and a bottle of water was hurled against the cabinet that Scarlet had almost knocked herself out on. There was a small _thunk _sound as the Turk's knife landed in the door. "Your father called and said that your existence is a mistake!"

Eight miles away, on the edge of the plate, Rude was going through his morning routine. The thing about his house that drove everyone who stayed overnight into a fit, aside from how high all the ceilings and doorframes were, was that it as absolutely silent for most of the time.

No one understood just how he could shave – without even the hum of an electric razor – in total quiet.

But he'd just finished that, and had moved on to his breakfast. As soon as he'd swallowed the last bit of hash browns, he checked his watch and determined he had about fifteen minutes until he needed to leave for work, so he sat down with the paper.

His obsession with silence ran on the same principle as people who like loud music and parties. It was much more comfortable for him to spend twelve hours meditating in solitude than it would be if he went to a bass-powered rave with Reno. In the latter situation, he would feel needlessly threatened and uncomfortable. In the former, he could be content with himself.

His redheaded friend had grimaced upon finding out he was "one of those weird Zen fucks." Rude remembered this with a grin, flipped the page, and checked his watch again.

_Crinkle. Tick, tick, tick, tick._

The next noise combination was another turn of the page, the sounding of the grandfather clock in the living room, and his loud watch yet again. His teams had all won their games, and he reminded himself to collect his bets at the office.

_Crinkle. Bong – bong – bong – bong – bong – bong – bong – bong. Tick, tick, snap, tick._

"Eight-o'-clock," he muttered, glancing over an article about the hard times in Mideel with the threat of a Lifestream explosion. He wondered if Reno knew and if he would even care about his hometown anymore. They had kicked him out, after all. He made a mental note to mention it just in case.

_Tick, tick, tick, sip, tick, snapsnap, tick._

Actually, Rude's obsession with silence was a form of sensory deprivation he thought he was absolutely in need of. His logic was that all Turks needed to be able to respond to even the slightest of threats, and therefore they had to be aware of them. If not for Reno's dumb, clumsy luck, he would have been killed many times over by people sneaking around under his perpetually ringing ears.

"Eight-o'-five," Rude, who had learned to pick up on the slightest disturbance, said a bit louder. "Time for work." He stood up, paused, reconsidered, then folded his newspaper and tucked it into his suit. He finished his coffee before turning around.

_Tick, tick, fwip, tick._

He cocked his head to the side and looked down. "Eight-o'-six," he growled.

_Tick, tick, tick, **BANGBANG.**_

There was another moment of silence, which Rude was in no way objected to, then the dialing of a number on his PHS. After a pause came, "Tseng? Rude. He's up? Great. Yep. Listen, have we pissed off the Wutain Royal Guard in any way lately? Hm? Yeah. No, I'm fine. To Reeve? Of course." He checked his watch. "Ten minutes, no more. Sure. Bye."

He snapped the PHS closed, put away the gun, and bent down to claim his prize, prying it from the hand of a Guardsman without a face. There was something about a Wutain sword made for an unfulfilled purpose that really appealed to him, especially when that purpose involved the removal of his head. He set it on the coffee table for whenever he got home that night and dragged the samurai out of the house behind him, making sure he waved to the neighbors as he did.

Nice people, those Thompsons. Real tolerant. Good thing the kids had gone to school already.

Five minutes later, one past when he usually left for work, he was carrying a dead Wutain with a plastic bag over his head into Reeve's office, slapping him down on the therapist's couch the Urban Development manager often relaxed in. "Eight-o'-six A.M. Call Godo and tell him Rude's pissed."

"Mind if I drown this hangover first?" he asked before taking a swig out of a coffee mug holding something that didn't smell like coffee. "Reno's awake, by the way." Reeve stood up and started investigating the body.

Rude pulled the sack off of the samurai's head and put a nearby rag down under it to save the man's couch. "Tseng told me. Guy's immune system never ceases to baffle me."

That was true about everyone who had dealings with Reno. No matter what happened to him, be it the flu or some mangled body part, he was up within a week and wearing the cast as a pity tool. He and Tseng knew damn well that he didn't need the arm sling, but they figured he deserved a bit of a vacation.

Reeve tripled as the Head of Urban Development, private medical aid, and in-house psychologist. He pried open the eyes of the Wutain, checked his pulse, couldn't find it, checked it again, realized he was being stupid, and inspected the gunshot wounds. "He came at you bare-fist? Hard to believe Godo would send someone that defenseless at a Turk."

"Six throwing stars," the bald man lied, "which will be unwillingly and personally removed from my dining room wall." He knew that the Turks could get away with pretty much anything aside from steal Wutain war equipment for domestic purposes. It broke the import/export laws between their country and the company. "So how's Reno?"

The older man finished his inspection, told Rude to hold on a minute, and picked up the phone. After a brief call to Professor Hojo, which involved much grimacing, he said, "Typical Reno. His arm's fine, they said, and his back'll be better in a few days, which means he'll bitch for weeks. Mako enhancements really did wonders for that kid." He picked up his coat and started putting it on.

"Where are you going so early?" Rude asked. Reeve didn't usually leave on business until after the morning meeting, or even lunch in some cases. He definitely didn't leave at all when there had been an assassin after a Turk; that was something he needed to stay around and take care of.

He took another drink from his mug, swirled it around, and took a third. He locked the office after he and Rude had left and they started walking toward the elevator. "I need to go see how Reno's really doing. Apparently, no nurse is willing to even go into his room. He ran one out last night and threw a knife at another one this morning. He says he'll only talk to me."

"Make sure to mention that the Royal Guard's out for our heads again. First AVALANCHE, now this." He hit the button to take him to the Turks' floor and Reeve's for the infirmary. "Then again, Scarlet's there, I'm sure. He should be fine."

Reeve allowed a small smirk at this. As much as they pretended not to, they trusted the weapons specialist with everything they had. "I'll see you at the morning meeting and we can let Rufus know," he said as he got off at his floor, waving behind him. "Take it easy."

Rude expected a bit of ease for a while, but it was cut short as soon as he walked into the office. Tseng swore loudly into the phone and then stood up, eyes wild. "Rude! Thank Holy you're here!" He half-sat again, then stood back up more furiously. "No! Ah! Rude, I just got a call from Rufus. The Turks need to be ready to relocate to the Junon offices by noon. You and Elena – **Elena! Elena, come out here!** – you, Elena, and I need to be dropped off at the Mythril Mines on our way. AVALANCHE has been sighted heading that way after Sephiroth. And Reno. Reno. How's Reno?" His face went blank, his head cocked to the side, and he looked genuinely curious.

"Reno is fine, Tseng," his friend said calmly. "We'll go to the Mythril Mines. We'll make sure nothing happens that doesn't need to happen. We'll go to Junon after that and drink this all away, right, Rookie?" He looked at the newly-arrived woman, pausing for a moment to notice with much interest that she had her blouse bunched up above her stomach to get some air on her burn, and nodded.

She was perplexed. "What am I –" She noticed her obviously stressed captain and changed her tone. "I mean, yes, sir, anything that needs to be done." She was then told to grab any necessary belongings for work and go to the roof at noon, where their helicopter would depart from.

In about half an hour, Reeve retrieved them for the morning meeting, which was to be held an hour early because of what had just been revealed to them. Tseng had all of his paperwork packed, Rude had only his gun to go home and retrieve, and Elena had very few things to take at all.

Therefore, when he'd heard about the relocation, Reno sent her to get his things, which would take up his bag and hers as well. The others explained this at the meeting and it was underway.

"Well," Rufus began, "as anyone who got the message knows, we're temporarily relocating the company to our headquarters in Junon and sending the Turks out to acquire the whereabouts of Sephiroth and AVALANCHE. While we're on the topic, Tseng, how is Miss Simms working?"

Tseng looked around the table, thinking of all the ways to answer that question. One involved the phrase "slave labor," and others contained "torture" and "mistreatment." He finally settled on, "It's most definitely a trial run."

If she'd been able to hear him, Elena might have been slightly offended, but she was instead in her fellow employee's apartment. Her bag had been filled by the cleaning supplies they would need as well as her personal possessions, and it was Reno's list that was confusing her. On top of his horrible penmanship, he was asking for things in completely different languages.

So far she had compiled his entire minibar into the carrying case he'd had made for it and loaded six cartons of Seven Star Box cigarettes from his secret stash into the side pouches. She'd grabbed whatever else she could make out from the list – a company photo album, a sixteen pound bag of coffee beans, three spare suits, various other clothes, and more – and thrown it into the a much larger sack. It was at his two prized lighters that she paused, though.

Inside the drawer was a small blue book, imprinted with the Turk seal and the word "Schedule," another thing he'd said to pick up. She would have just left it alone, seeing as how she had one and they were used solely for work, but she found a small pink ribbon sticking out of one of the pages.

She didn't assume Reno was one to wear ribbons in his hair and became curious. She glanced into all the rooms to make sure he, with his broken back and injured arm, hadn't followed her into the apartment and slowly opened it. In the margins surrounding a page of scribbles were sketches. The first looked like a badly proportioned hourglass, and then there was one that seemed to be a pyramid. These continued, alternating semi-regularly with different styles of circles, until there were drawings of what seemed to be business suits.

Then there was a face. It was a woman's face, and one she had seen before. Next to it was a quick sketch of Reno, and upon closer examination, Elena noticed something in large, black writing on the back of the page. She turned it and was about to read the word when she heard glass shattering.

She dropped the book into the sack – accidentally, of course – and spun to face the window. There stood an apparently confused Wutain samurai, sword and all. They stared at each other, then the second muttered, "Uhh." He darted through the room, opened the front door in the main entry, and checked the apartment number. He looked back at Elena and ran toward her, swerving at the last second and stopping just before the window. From under his mask came a pronounced, "Well, fuck," before he dived back out the window.

Against everything she wanted to witness that day, she rushed to the window just in time to see him hit the pavement below, next to the remains of her coffee maker. It took a moment for this to register, and after such a moment had passed, she ran into the bathroom and rightfully threw up all over the place, finally aiming it into the sink.

It was there that she saw the note she had just hurled all over. It read, in a neat scrawl that definitely wasn't the apartment owner's:

**Elena –  
****  
Make sure the bathroom is clean when you leave.  
I've had rats before.  
Remember: your ass.**

**- Reno**

The blonde wiped her mouth and looked at the mess she had just made. There was a blob on the mirror, quite a bit on the floor, a few stray smears on the walls, and the toilet seat would need cleaning. She ripped the note from the sink and threw it away, running the water after she did.

Staring down into it, she wondered if maybe Reno had the right idea in drowning himself.

Half an hour later, when she was back at the office after loading their supplies into the helicopter next to Tseng's and Rude's bags, the feeling had faded. She had helped herself to a few beers, feeling she was entitled to them after her day, and had relaxed considerably. She had relaxed almost too much, in fact, because she had forgotten about the Wutain until she saw Rude practicing yoga in his office.

"Rude!" she called from the doorway, scaring the large man. "Just thought I'd tell you guys, some samurai came into Reno's apartment. Wanted to kill somebody. Left me alone and jumped out the window, though. Nothin' else. See you at noon." She waved happily and closed the door behind her.

The bald man stared at the wall for a moment. His brows furrowed and relaxed again, then he scratched his cheek. He specifically remembered deadbolting the door before he'd taken his shirt off. He checked his watch and saw that had been about half an hour ago, after the meeting. He'd said, "Tseng, I'm gonna go exercise. Make sure nobody comes in."

He decided to stop thinking about that because it would just scare him when he realized she'd picked his lock without a sound and picked up the phone to call Reeve. The man would certainly like to know about the second attack.

He got a busy signal, because Tseng was currently talking his ear off about the relocation. Reeve hurried around his office, slinging things into boxes, taking things back out, throwing things away, taking out the garbage, and having a terribly hard time because of all the people calling him about the attempted assassination that morning. Being the foreign ambassador of Midgar, he'd decided long ago, was a major pain in the ass.

"Tseng, yes, I realize that it's a tragedy that your very own people would try to take out one of your most trusted peers, but you have to admit, that whole war business did birth a few grudges." He half-listened as the Wutain ranted about that being no excuse for Godo to send out Royal Guards to take out his Turks. The other part of his mind was screaming at him that it was 11:34 and he needed to move it.

He said, quite calmly, "Okay, Tseng, I know you need to pack some things, and so do I, so I'll see you in the helicopter." At his friend's response of "I've packed all my things and honestly think you should be giving me more of your concentration," Reeve yelled, "I'm trying to concentrate on my own problems, so if you'll shut up and leave me alone, I'll concentrate on you later!"

There was a pause.

Reeve noticed that the usual radio in Tseng's office had gone silent.

Rufus ShinRa, the one man in the building with the power to interrupt a phone call, quietly said, "I was simply asking if you would ride with us so you won't have to wait for the Turks to finish at the mines. However, if you want to be left alone, Emerson, I'll just save you a seat in the helicopter." There was a click and Reeve felt his security flake apart like a cracker in a paint shaker.

He quickly called his employer back. "I'm sorry, sir," he sighed when Rufus picked up. "It's just been a bit hectic around the place lately, as I'm sure you know. I'm getting calls from every room in the building with someone wanting to know the story behind the attack on Rude this morning."

The white-coated president's tone was that of understanding. "I know, Reeve, but look how relaxed you are now. You'll be riding in the black executive helicopter with Scarlet, Heideggar, Palmer, Professor Hojo, a few SOLDIERs, and myself. Hojo, as you know, will be flying. Any objections?"

"Hojo's flying" begged to crawl from Reeve's mouth, but he swallowed it. "No, sir. I'll be on the roof in ten minutes. Is there anything that needs to be done before we leave?"

There was a pause on the other end, then Rufus' creamy chuckle drifted over the line. "Perhaps you'd like to console Miss Simms. It appears as though she was also confronted by one of the Royal Guards this morning. Otherwise, I'll see you on the helicopter."

Reeve officially felt like shooting himself by the time he put the handset down, but Rufus didn't mind. He had everything essential to the survival of ShinRa loaded into the back of his large helicopter. Heideggar, the man he loved to hate, and Palmer, the man he hated to love, were at his side as he walked onto the roof. He gave his city one last wave before boarding the helicopter, patting the professor on the back as he did. Hojo loved flying because it kept everyone else on pins and needles.

Tseng, pilot of the navy blue helicopter beside them, was given a "Good luck" over the radio as he took off. A SOLDIER sat in the passenger's seat, Rude and Elena in the row behind them, and Reno was securely locked in place in the back. Hojo knew that helicopter, and he knew it would rattle and whine all the way to the mines, which was why he conveniently never flew with the Turks.

The executive chopper, however, was fast and comfortable. He had designed it as nearly soundproof and installed couches and a bar in the back. The seating was circular, and ideal for anyone Rufus was trying to wow with his city while making a business proposal. Under the floor was a large foam pad and shocks, making turbulence almost undetectable from the back. It was sad that he'd never built one for himself, mused the professor.

The SOLDIERs accompanied Reeve onto the craft and the Urban Development manager collapsed on one of the plush couches, obviously strained to his mental capacity. Scarlet patted him on the head as they lifted off the roof, aimed directly for Junon.

They discussed minor matters on the way, knowing the stress of Sephiroth wasn't something they wanted to bring up at the moment, focusing mostly on Rufus' Inauguration. Even though the company recognized him as being in power, the public would want a ceremony to welcome him into office, which would be executed a few days after arriving in Junon.

After landing, they set the building up for use, but chose to take the night off to enjoy the city. Rufus gathered everyone into his office and handed out hundred gil notes, telling them it was the birth of a new age and to go have dinner, on him. Reeve and Scarlet "stopped off at the bathroom," which was code for sneaking off while Heideggar and Palmer stood outside the door rocking back and forth on their heels. They pooled their money and headed to Café Faust.

ShinRa itself owned Café Faust, and it had been agreed upon at establishment that there would be no free meals. That had been Rufus' father's wish, but it still stood. With two-hundred gil and a fifty percent discount apiece, though, the two could afford Faust's money-sucking prices without opening their own supplies.

"Will Reno kill me if I offer you champagne?" Reeve queried after dinner, knowing the Turk was a good sport when it came to people offering Scarlet friendly advances. They got along perfectly well, the two men, and it was a long while ago that Reno had formally given him permission to interact with his prized Scarlet.

She laughed, shaking her head. "That man may go to some extremes, but it's nice knowing there's someone in the world who bows before you if you want them to." The bottle arrived and she opened it, making sure she hit someone in a suit with the cork. "Besides, the bastard means well. He's just a bit hostile."

Reeve had gone in to check on his friend this morning and was quickly greeted with a mock-tearful, "Oh, Reeve! They've been doing awful, awful things to me! They won't let me have a cigarette, Reeve! How do I live without a cigarette!" He had been amused, but knew full well that if it had been anyone else, the redhead would have made sure the second knife didn't miss. "So what is it about that guy that makes you go back to him every day?"

Scarlet poured herself a glass of champagne as she thought it over. "It's the fact," she said slowly, "that two of the only three other men in the building that I can put up with are screwing each other. And I know that after Melissa, your dating experiences ended." She smiled over the rim of her glass. "Though you would be in the front running if you were still looking."

Melissa had been Reeve's fiancée, who had left him because he spent too much time at work. After that, he had vowed to never get attached and stick to his work, which was why he kept himself stressed all the time; it kept his mind only on the job and off any physical attraction. Scarlet fit his mold for a match, but every time he concentrated on this, the phone rang and he thanked it for doing so. It kept him happy knowing he would die with a pen in his hand and be too busy to regret it, as masochistic as that may have sounded to anyone else.

"So Reno was the ideal choice. He keeps me happy, don't you think?"

Reeve nodded. "You smile a hell of a lot, and I know for a fact that's not because you work at ShinRa, Incorporated." The only person who smiled because he worked at the company was Hojo, and they all knew that was probably a chemical miscalculation that led to facial spasms.

They sat in silence for a moment. They looked rather thoughtful, maybe about something profoundly deep, like "Where did the years all go?" or "How crazy is this thing called love?" In actuality, they both really had started thinking about why Hojo smiled all the time.

Some things were just better as juvenile outcomes.

"So should we go pay him a visit?" Reeve suggested. "Maybe set up a wedding date while we're there? I hear it's beautiful from inside the cannon," he offered. It was a public secret that Scarlet and Reno were engaged; they had been for months now, without much progress, but neither one seemed to be tired of it.

She smirked. "You're one of a kind, Reeve," she replied, plugging the bottle with a napkin so they could sneak some to their red-haired companion. They left after paying their bill, enjoying the night air as they walked to the hospital wing of their new building. They had called in advance and the secretary told them that Rude, Tseng, and Elena had dropped him off a while ago and were heading back to camp at the mines. When they got there, an annoyed nurse was already storming out of the Turk's room.

"Are you the bereaved?" she growled.

They both jumped a bit, but knew she wouldn't have that kind of tone if he'd actually died. "Are you suggesting he's dead?" Scarlet asked, lifting a brow. She would have to do some serious ass-kicking if he had gotten hurt in here, and Palmer could vouch that her nails left scars.

She glared at them. "He will be if he **keeps this shit up!**" she screamed at the door. Without another word, she stormed out of the hospital on the spot. They came to find out that Reno had asked for chocobo feather pillows, and when she had repeatedly replied they had none, he'd started throwing IV needles at her.

In an even more bizarre situation than the previous night, that nurse also ended up at the same bar Heideggar and Palmer went to after being ditched, where they got into a particularly amusing argument about what brand of toothpaste was best to nullify the taste of vodka vomit.

After a few glasses of such, she went home with Palmer and quickly found out it was Wutain Pine.

Heideggar heard the story first and found both occurrences fairly disturbing.


	5. White Lace and Strange

**Author's Note: **Where the hell have I been, you ask? I wish you'd tell me because that place was very dark. I should note that I had planned for this to follow the plot of the game, but I'm afraid I'm going to stray from it sometime soon. This round's soundtrack provided by Nirvana for some weird, weird reason.

**Strange Bedfellows: White Lace and Strange**

**- **

The first day in Junon went relatively according to protocol. It was so unusual for this to happen that even Palmer woke up the next morning, hung over, unsure as to whether he'd actually fallen asleep in such an uncomfortable position, and he was in a perpetual position of discomfort.

The Turks arrived in the city early the next morning, having stayed a night over in the mines so they wouldn't have to dodge the Zolom at night, and went directly to their offices to drop their things off. Tseng had been the first one to the door and walked in, expecting the familiar smell of Auto-Brew coffee machines and clean linoleum.

He found, instead, thirteen parade organizers huddled over a map and a dog licking itself under the table.

Needless to say, he found out quickly that their office had been turned into an official planning room for Rufus' inauguration and their quarters were much more suitable. As soon as the door to the Executive ShinRa Task Force Suite was open, Elena knew she wasn't going to get any work done in here.

Further inspection told Rude that he wouldn't, either, but Tseng had no problem going to the main room and getting on to paperwork. They had an in-room SuperJet 5000 hot tub that could hold three people – Rude accounted for – as well as boil three dozen eggs. These settings were not mix-and-match recommended, but they had seen enough news reports to know there were some real idiots in Midgar. The kitchen came with a pair of everything; sinks, refrigerators, ovens, microwaves, and whatever else one might need to accommodate more guests than ShinRa ever expected. There were two water beds and two mattresses, complete with four feather pillows apiece, and a television that Elena figured wouldn't even fit through Reno's apartment doorway. The balcony overlooking the pool had a gap in the railing and a diving board bolted on; Tseng said that that, construction and all, had been Reno's doing.

Despite this, it held Rude.

They found their bathing suits, each with a note of apology for the relocation on top of it, on their respective beds. Tseng and Rude's were perfectly acceptable; navy blue shorts that came down to their knees with a calligraphy T stitched into the right leg. Elena, however, had doubts about the mindset of whoever had laid hers out; she even went so far as to figure that was not the originally supplied suit that Rufus or whoever was in charge had selected.

It was a two-piece, of course, because otherwise the whole thing wouldn't have worked. On top of this, it was, indeed, quite white and thin. Frighteningly white and thin, come to think of it, which she noticed as she picked it up and checked the tag. To top the whole thing off, someone was either really screwing with her or they had entirely misjudged her width. Everywhere. Two sizes too small.

She threw the thing onto her pillow, growling. "What is this, Fuck With The Rookie Week!" she yelled.

Tseng stuck his head out of his room, trying not to show the fact that his shoulder was bare. He'd somehow managed to creep past them and put his trunks on. "What's wrong, Elena?" he asked, lifting a brow.

"Someone's either really trying to mess with me or my _underwear _is a bit too small," she grumbled, snatching it from the pillow and holding it up for him to see.

The Wutain shrugged and stepped out of his room. "The pool's not public until about noon anyway, so we'd be the only ones in there for a few hours and, I mean, who are we? Then, when we come back tonight, we'll have figured something out."

There was a moment of awkward silence.

He continued with a good-spirited, "I forgot my pants, didn't I?"

Rude nodded and he coolly walked back to his office, shutting and locking the door behind him. He listened to them talk for a while and went with their decision of just working until the pool got more exciting that night.

The newest Turk among them had very light work – which wasn't saying much, in actuality – and finished that evening. Rude suggested they go for dinner and put off the rest for a day, which she very much agreed to. A strange thing she had noticed was that Tseng, despite how easygoing he could be, was a real workaholic. He'd come out three times within the span of about eight hours. Twice he was grabbing another mugful of coffee beans, and the third he was using the restroom. Each time, however, he was reading some important document and didn't notice them speaking to him.

He finally took a break long enough for them to go to Café Faust, where they joined Rufus, Reeve, and Scarlet; none of them seemed to have had a much easier day. Rufus had been doing work for literally thirty-six hours straight, Reeve had been on the phone with Wutain administrators and his people in Midgar sorting out the sudden, unauthorized rebellion, and Scarlet had been in and out of meetings concerning some sort of super weapon.

They all agreed to take the night off and come out to the pool later, though, and dinner was eating on a relieved air. They sat and talked for at least an hour after they had finished, then split up. Tseng went back to the hotel and Rude accompanied Elena to the local swimming apparel store.

They had, if anything more had been expected of them, closed half an hour before then.

The discouraged pair returned to the hotel and discussed it with Tseng, whose response was, "It wouldn't exactly show a great interest in the job to blow off your employer's first pool party." If anyone else had said that, she might have socked them in the face, but Tseng's words were good enough to get her into the hot tub in the corner, where they had their own personal bartender.

This place, thought Reeve into his third glass of brandy, was getting better every second.

"That," Rufus had said as soon as the Turks had arrived, "is not what I'd had picked out for you." He looked at Scarlet, who had relatively worn something similar. "Remind me, who did I have deliver the supplies to Junon?"

She shrugged, tossing some water on her hair. "I remember you threw them on one of the helicopters, but otherwise, I don't recall." She laughed quietly. "Kids can't keep track of their shit anymore, hm?"

Tseng offered, "Well, I don't suppose it matters much anymore."

The pool was rather busy, so they strayed away from there for the most part. A few times, Rufus and Rude staged boxing matches that ended up with one of them going into the deep end with a splash, and Scarlet told Elena stories about the love lives of about everyone in the building while floating around the hot tub. Elena herself dared not to touch the pool, as it would have been much colder and she recognized some of the men as locals from the Costa del Sol beaches. Breaking the pact were Reeve and Tseng, who quietly discussed the inaugural parade, possibilities of an AVALANCHE attack, and the abrupt uprising of Wutain samurai in the other hot tub.

"Speaking of," said the Turk, "did Godo ever call you back?"

The Lord had been in and out of meetings, press conferences, private ceremonies, and Wutain temples for about three days now and his assistant refused to give anything more specific than that, even to Reeve. This being so, the ambassador had taken to watching every news hour he could catch, watching as Godo slowly became more and more ragged before finally taking a break. So far he had taken a lot of notes and only pieced together one definite, undisputed thing:

There had been at least one assassination attempt.

Reeve's terrible conclusion was not his fault, though. The Lord of Wutai often spoke in different dialects and different languages to accommodate the huge amount of press that often followed him around. Since no news station would tell the public what language their information had come into their hands in, no one could be exactly sure how bad the translations were and how many things were fabrications to make up for stubborn, compensating news crews.

Reeve nodded, though. "Yeah, he called late last night, straight to my office. He said he didn't have much time to talk but that he was sorry to tell me he didn't know what the hell was going on either. Apparently this is some bizarre rebel group or something blowing off a bit of steam."

"We hope, anyway."

Tseng turned, saw Rude standing over them, and slid aside so he could get in his piece of mind. He'd just gotten used to the big man sneaking around. "Tseng, you and I know that you, Reno, and I can all take care of ourselves, right?"

His friend nodded.

"Only problem is Elena," filled in Reeve, checking to make sure she was still being distracted by Scarlet's unrelenting babbling. She could be pretty annoying when she wanted to be. "If you told me it wasn't a miraculous stroke of good luck that hers had been looking for Reno and didn't know she was a Turk, I'd call you a liar. We all know she wouldn't be sitting over there now had she been the mark."

Rude glanced over, eyes unreadable behind his sunglasses. He held up his hand and waited until the bartender brought him a lit cigarette. "She's balls-fucking-tough, though. We just need to make sure she's watched until she learns to be prepared for that."

She personally didn't feel too tough at the moment, what with her ear being talked off about who was fucking who and who had what disease and who was a big disappointment in the sack. She personally wondered how the woman had kept a job for all these years, but she laughed right along with the weapons specialist and acted surprised when the need arose.

Her real focus, though, had moved on to Reno. It had bypassed her mental train earlier to think he might be responsible for her current attire issues, but now that she thought about it, he was the most obvious choice. He hated her guts and wanted to ruin her life, or so it seemed, and would certainly not be above pulling something like this to get a good look at her. 'Horny bastard,' she thought, chuckling as Scarlet mentioned just how disgusting Palmer was without his shirt – not that she'd slept with him or anything, but he had a tendency to go into the wrong bathroom at lunch.

'Yeah,' she mused grouchily, 'that redheaded little shit probably thought it'd be funny to see me embarrass myself in front of Rude and Tseng. Mostly Tseng. Serves him right he got hit by the damn car and can't see it now. Throw away my coffee pot, burn me, try to drown yourself and make me watch you. Next time I see you, I'll knock the teeth outta your mouth, you –'

Her thoughts were cut short by a sudden screaming. She immediately came back to reality and saw the waves in the pool settling down – this was followed by the thought that this was an indoor swimming pool and there was no use for waves. Scarlet was howling with laughter beside her, and she realized why as Reno's head bobbed to the surface, grinning, despite the broken, wet cigarette in his mouth.

The diving board on the fifth floor balcony sprung back and forth, seemingly unsure it had actually just been used to leap fifty feet into a crowd of people.

"How is he _walking?_" Elena asked the woman beside her, who was already getting out of the hot tub.

She turned around and shrugged, motioning for the Turk to follow. "There's something horribly amazing about that guy's skeletal and immune systems. His arm was probably fine before the accident, and his back, I'm sure, is perfectly healed." The swimmers were now whooping and cheering the spectacle and Reno bowed as soon as he'd gotten out of the water. "I don't think we'll ever figure it out; he's like the indestructible man," she said impassively and hurried to greet him.

Elena's thoughts were much more on the negative side of Reno. She was still quite fired up about her current situation, and that he'd just happily crashed into the pool from five stories up without even an apology beforehand – as crazy as that was – pissed her off to no limit. He was standing there, grinning like a moron and putting on a big show, and she was miserable because he'd decided to fuck with her one last time. It had to have been him, she reasoned. His back was apparently fine enough to swan dive, so he certainly could have switched her bathing suit with something from Scarlet's lingerie drawer.

The final straw was when he saw her. And laughed at her. Loudly. No one seemed to be joining in, because they had all gotten it out of their systems an hour ago. Either that or they just appreciated it much more than he did. When he had regained his motor skills, he barked out, "Rookie, do you even know what you're wearing! Hah! A bit daring for a company trip, isn't it?"

His surprise came when she punched him in the cheek and sent him flying backward into the pool. He choked and gagged as he came back to the surface, momentarily mourning his loss of a perfectly good Seven Star cigarette, then watching as she stormed back to the room. Well, he was more or less watching her hips storm back to the room, but it was all the same to him. He gave Tseng and Reeve a helpless look and they seemed to have no sympathy. Scarlet thought it was hilarious, Rufus was negotiating with the hotel manager already, and Rude was smoking in the hot tub, looking totally uninterested.

The redhead shrugged and pulled himself back out of the pool, snatching a drink off a passing tray and downing it. It felt strangely good to be back at work. . .those nurses sure had been a real hassle. Bitch, bitch, bitch, that's all they ever did. "Stop throwing things, Mr. Drannor!" he mimicked in a high soprano as he made his way to Rude. "I'll have your fucking suit, Reno!"

He hopped into the hot tub and looked at the bald man. One unaffiliated with Rudolph Hurst might have run away, because his shoulders were trembling slightly and there was a deep frown on his face. His closest friends, of course, would know that this was how he laughed at someone.

The guy's poker face was amazing.

"And why did you insist on switching her swimsuit with your ex-girlfriend's clothes, therefore getting me socked in the face and possibly docked pay?" Reno also took a lit cigarette from the bartender as they relaxed into the water.

The other thought this over for a moment, then allowed the slightest hint of a smile to take over. "I knew she'd immediately blame you and in no way endanger my own personal health, which would be a good thing on her part. I also knew you'd be fine and probably crash the party so you'd be in the perfect position for the whole set-up. But the most important reason?" He took a drag and spread his arms out on the edge of the hot tub. "The pleasure of seeing her wearing that."

Reno scoffed. "You're a fucking dick. Honest, but still a fucking dick." He didn't really care about Elena's opinion of him being somewhere in the region of four-letter words and childish pranks. The fact of the matter was that Reno loved gil for cigarettes, and his best friend seemed to derive some sick pleasure out of keeping it away from him whenever possible. Thus was precisely the reason that Reno had called Rude a fucking dick before.

"If it's my honesty you admire, I suppose I should let you know that your mattress is being thrown off the balcony."

One scream multiplied into about ten howls behind Reno, followed by a very loud splash. He didn't even flinch; just thought a moment and then said, "I suppose this was all part of your plan, too. She'd throw my mattress, I'd bitch, I'd wind up on your waterbed with Tseng on the other, and you two would have to shack up after you told her about the rats on the floor that aren't actually there."

His best friend shrugged and took another drag. "Beautiful."

The woman in question had a much different reaction later. After they had broken it to her that the mattress had taken on almost too much water to drag it out of the pool and therefore would not be returning to the bed, they talked sleeping arrangements. She immediately protested Reno, and then Rude stepped forward, noting it was certainly a two-person bed.

"Just sleep on the floor," she grumbled, having finally changed into something less revealing.

Rude tried not to smirk as he replied, very coolly, "Rats. I'm deathly afraid of rats. Ever seen a Junon rat?" She shook her head and he informed her, "Children have been stolen and taken underground by Junon rats. They go straight for flesh; as long as we're not on the floor, we're safe."

There were no rats, of course, but the actual Junon rats were known for doing that, so she believed him. She brought up, as they were climbing into their respective beds, why he didn't just bunk up with either Tseng or Reno. The former case, he said, was horribly unprofessional, and the latter was right out because it would be awkward. "Besides, I sleep in the nude and have a horrible habit of fondling anyone I share a mattress with," the redhead pitched in. He lifted up the comforter in a gesture of invitation.

Elena went straight to bed muttering something, trying desperately to remove the image from her head.

"Yeah, I found that out the hard way," Tseng painfully reminisced as he turned the lights out. The red digits of the clock proclaimed it was just past three in the morning, and they had turned to four-thirty when Rude finally started slipping into a real night's rest. This was perhaps because Elena had rolled over sometime near half an hour ago and gotten very comfortable against him.

Or on top of him; it was one of those things.

Literally a foot away, just beyond the wall behind his bald head, in the ShinRa Executive Suite, Scarlet was wide awake bored. Rufus had retired to his personal suite immediately after the pool incident, which left her with Reeve and two empty beds. Heideggar and Palmer were never allowed into the nice rooms, because they always left a mess, and it was rumored that Hojo either slept in his lab or hadn't slept in thirty-eight years.

And you could only read Eight Ways to Please Your Body – Reno laughed every time – brochures once or twice per trip to Junon. The television was bright and would wake Reeve up, but she figured he needed his sleep after a day like that. Rufus was probably asleep, therefore calling him was also right out. Her throat was starting to itch from sitting there for two hours chain-smoking and she decided she should probably put her mouth to some constructive use.

She picked up her PHS and walked out onto the balcony, sliding the door softly shut behind her. A few dim lights were on around the pool area, but nothing blinding and sudden. No one else appeared to be hanging out on the fifth floor so she relaxed and dialed the only person she knew was more than happy to talk to her at this time of night.

"Downtown Dry Cleaning. This is Cheryl. How may I help you?"

Cheryl was in no way who she wanted to talk to, but was nonetheless someone she'd had conversations with before. The woman didn't exactly bother her; it was more of the third party concept. If she ever called the cleaners, she always got on the phone with Cheryl, who knew her by name and always asked how she was doing, despite the fact they'd never met.

Scarlet smiled. "G'morning, Cheryl. William Chassity in, by chance?"

"Ah, hello, Scarlet," came the warm voice over the line. "Why even ask? I'll put you right through to him."

She managed to sneak in a "Thanks, Cheryl," before the jazzy waiting music replaced any other sound. The red-clad woman raked a nail down the railing of the balcony nervously. She hadn't talked to William in about a month and was afraid he might not have the answers she was looking for.

There was a click as the jazz music silenced itself. "Scarlet? Listen, I'm just leaving, but I can call you from ho –"

"That's okay, William," she interrupted, scratching the rail more furiously. "I'll be fast. Just calling and checking to see if, y'know. . .you'd gotten in touch with Mom. . ." Her worries grew when he didn't say anything. ". . .And maybe asked if she and Dad want to come to the wedding?"

He still didn't reply for a moment, and when he did, it started with a miserable sigh. "You know I wish I had good news for you." Scarlet's stomach tightened and her throat constricted. "Still looks like they're pretty opposed to the entire thing, sorry to say. They said to tell you, if you ever called, they wish you the best in life and would love to see any grandchildren you have. I'll be there, though."

Scarlet nodded and swallowed hard, still embarrassed about showing any weakness in front of her older brother. "Alright. Listen, I've got some work to do, so I should probably get back to it." They exchanged good-byes and ended the call before she sat down with her back to the pool area, trying desperately not to get too worked up about it.

"Just figures," she muttered, picking at the carpet. "Just figures my family'd be that fucking stupid. They're ecstatic that I get a job working for the most dangerous company on the Planet, blowing shit up and helping people die, then I get engaged to a Turk and my parents disown me." She lit another cigarette, this one out of stress. "Not like I expected anything from them anyway. I worked to get myself here without their help and I sure as hell don't need it to get married."

William had always been their favorite. While he was getting pampered and given a free ride through Junon Excel, she'd been working two jobs to pay for her schooling and still endured pestering comments about "Oh, Scarlet, why are you struggling so much? Too poor to pay for a technical college so you're compensating with JXL?"

William felt for her and had made it a point to slip her some gil whenever their parents sent it. When she'd not only passed from Junon Excel, but had gotten the job at ShinRa, they'd sent a letter of praise with two-thousand gil in it to her office. When she'd told them about Reno and how wonderful he was and that they were getting married, her mother had cried, thrown things, and yelled about how she could've been so much better than that while her father shoved her roughly out of the house. Again, William was there, driving her to her apartment and staying to help out until she was more stable.

"Oh, well," she sighed as she stood up from the floor, brushing herself off. "Just another fucking sob story." She took a final pull off her smoke and put it out on the railing, tossing the remains into a nearby trashcan. She opened the balcony door, went into her suite, and crawled into bed, thinking she might be able to get some sleep with that resolved.


	6. Laid

**Author's Note**: It's Reno Spiegel, back and out of school with a brand new chapter of this thing. Hurrah. Song credit this update to James. The lyrics don't actually fit the story, but the whole flow of the song does, so this chapter is also dedicated to Chocobo Goddess, who reintroduced me to the strange song. Thanks, E-Mommy.

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**Strange Bedfellows: Laid**

-

"Look what I can do!"

All three of his fellow Turks awoke at the howl, but only two of them actually got to look at what he could do at ten-thirty in the morning. 'What he could do' involved leaping quite a long distance to land his foot precisely in Rude's gut with a big smile. Rude didn't see it because, as soon as his eyes had actually opened and he'd removed his face from Elena's hair, his vision went exploded into the strangest platinum color.

Needless to say, Tseng was not the one who'd just bounded from one bed to the other.

So it is also needless to say that Reno was the one that Rude grabbed by the leg and, showing his strength when his adrenaline kicked in, threw into the opposite wall from his prone position. Perhaps fortunately, Reno had had this happen to him before and jumped right back up, staggering a bit. "Wasn't that a great trick!" he shouted, smiling as widely as ever.

Elena narrowed her eyes in his general direction, then pulled the comforter over her head again. "Morning people," she slurred. "Hate morning people. . .hate you more, Reno. . .more. . .morning people. . ."

Three seconds later, Reno had leapt from the floor and landed on top of her, waking her back up with a disgustingly wet kiss on the cheek. "Elena, darling, we've got work to do," he said to her grimacing face, ignoring her eyes being screwed shut and bouncing on the bed a bit. Rude was just thinking of how lucky she was that he'd put pants on this time.

He muttered, "Reno." This got the redhead's attention, but it turned that blindingly ugly smile at Rude. "Feel like going for a wakeup swim?"

At the word swim, Reno's mind had clicked into overdrive. With a fluid series of movements, he'd hopped off of the bed from his knees, stripped down to his boxers, and run full-bore toward the diving board. He didn't seem to mind slamming through the screen door, only yelped out a confused "Ow?" and leapt five stories into the pool. Tseng was at the counter by the time they heard the splash.

He looked terribly confused. ". . .Didn't I put out a pot of coffee?" he asked no one in particular, sounding groggy.

Elena's shirt had ridden up in the night and she was rubbing at her bruised hips. Rude's sunglasses weren't on him, so he only glanced at that before turning his attention to his boss. "You brewed herbal coffee from Wutai last night. The other coffee maker had a pot of Kick-in-the-Face Espresso when we went to bed. That one was mine."

The Wutain took a long look at his coffee maker. Then he looked at Rude's. Both were empty. He turned and stared blankly at the broken screen door then scratched his tousled hair in confusion. He walked to the espresso machine, pulled the pot out with a _clink_ sound, and shook it to make sure it was, in fact, empty. He walked back to where he was, repeated the action with his, then crossed the room and stuck his arm experimentally through the hole in the screen. He finished by, just for good measure, shaking his own coffee pot once more. He turned again, looked at Rude, and said, "Ah."

He could have said a number of things. He could have asked Rude if Reno could really drink that much without suffering a heart attack. He could have asked Elena if she'd gotten up and had any so his opinion of Reno wouldn't be so strange. However, a simple "Ah" had been enough for everyone in the room. Perhaps this was subconsciously aligned with the room next to them, where Reeve had simultaneously uttered the bizarre syllable.

His was a response to Godo, who he'd been on the phone with for an hour and a half. In this time he had taken two pages of notes on the ninja ordeal – the old man finally knew something – and for the most part listened. The Lord of Wutai had just told him how many of them to expect within the next week, and though the number was a bit discomforting, his reply was stoic and casual.

A shaky 18 glared up at him from the last line of handwriting.

Reeve had completely missed Reno's spectacle, or else he would have probably misinterpreted it as another assassination attempt and knocked that number down by one. He hoped to have many fewer than his associate's projection, being as how they had relocated to Junon, but nothing was sure. Someone might even be listening to the conversation right now.

"It's been wonderful clearing the air," Godo said in that fatherly way, probably in reference to his repeated denial of knowing anything about the attacks, "but I'm expected to give a sermon at the temple in half an hour, so I really should go get ready. Anything else we should discuss?"

The younger man checked over his notes and tapped his pen against the receiver. "Only one. We've already covered the fact that the Turks should do what they can to overcome this rebellion, but, in your opinion, should they really be worried about serious injury?"

Half a second was all it took for the Wutain lord to start chuckling. "Emerson," he laughed, "what a loaded question that is. If I say no, I'll be putting down the skills of my samurai. If I say yes, I'll be showing no faith in the skills of your task force and endangering my country if the Turks get wind of it. So rest easy knowing these men and women aren't coming after you, my friend."

Reeve's eyes narrowed and he scribbled down, '**GODO: UNCOOPERATIVE PRICK.**'

"Leave a message with my secretary if you need me. Especially so if there's another attack. Goodbye, Emerson."

"Have a good day," the other muttered, underlining his previous note as he tossed the phone onto the hook. He was totally unsurprised when Scarlet turned over and looked at him, awake as could be. "That man will kill me someday, and I don't mean with a gun."

The blonde smiled. "You look so stressed. I would think that finally sorting this whole mess out would have you relieved." She lit a cigarette and tossed the pack to him. She had calmed down a lot since talking to William the night before, but she still hadn't gotten any sleep.

"I just talked to Godo Kisaragi for an hour and a half. Three days ago, there was apparently a coup attempt on the pagoda by the Royal Guard, but they didn't get past the second floor without losing over half of their group. So now we've got word that twenty pissed-off samurai hopped on a yacht en route to Junon Port. As you know, two already came for the Turks, and by simple math and positioning, the other eighteen can't be far off. How the hell would you handle this?" Reeve fiddled with the plastic on the cigarette pack without taking one out.

Scarlet thought before she said, "Tell Tseng forty-eight and tell Rufus eighteen. Too low of a number and Tseng will get sloppy; lie to the president of the goddamn world and he'll let them have you. Besides, Tseng gets off on this kind of a thing."

It would have been even weirder if Tseng had been in the bathroom getting off to that kind of thing, but he was actually just starting back up with the paperwork. Reno hadn't been seen since his dive, Rude was taking a shower, and Elena was asleep once again. This was probably why no one noticed the picking of the lock or the opening of the door. If they had, Reeve might have been saved a lot of paperwork.

Lucky for them, the samurai creeping through the room failed to hear the shower turning off as she moved slowly toward the defenseless woman lying in bed. Rude, with the ears of a satellite, had actually heard the door open and stepped from the bathroom with very little sound for who he was and how large he was. Gently, without even a creak of the floor, he walked over to the intruder, gun at his side.

"Pst, fucker." It was ironic that wasn't a whisper, but his momentary enemy didn't find it funny. She was disarmed and backed all the way to the railing of the balcony two seconds later, so maybe that had something to do with it. The gun to her temple might have made a difference, too. "I'm giving you one minute to tell me just what you're trying to do to the Turks."

It didn't take a minute for the support to give way behind her, though. The bald man thought this was an excellent time to let go of the Guard's face, and watched with detached interest as she fell to her death, impaled on a loose rung of the railing. He even shot her again for good measure.

Scarlet and Reeve were immediately out on their own balcony; they might not even have noticed without the gunshot. The former grimaced at the mess and the latter threw his hands up. "You can't leave me alone for one fucking day, can you!" he yelled.

The Turk looked over and raised an eyebrow. "You might wanna call Godo about this," was all he said before going back into the room to stash the sword and get some clothes on. He was amazed to find Elena still asleep.

Reeve whimpered and looked at his blonde friend, who lit another cigarette. "No," she said, "you don't want to throw yourself off the balcony. I'll call Rufus and tell him to deal with it. You go sit in the hot tub, doll." She patted him on the shoulder and went back into the room, picking up the phone and doing just that.

The call was timed perfectly.

Godo had just locked the door to his office and started to take off his imperial robe, ready to finally go out for a jog since he had about ten minutes unscheduled. Of course, the phone was going to take up these ten minutes, so he answered it with a half-indignant "Yes?" and turned his self-sustained teapot on.

"Lord Kisaragi."

He was no stranger to the type of voice he'd just heard. It was the voice of a very tired, irritated man trying to be humane with him but finding it excruciatingly difficult. It was a voice spat between clenched teeth and the smile of someone who's just been tricked into eating something awfully bitter but still wants to say it was good. It was the voice of Rufus ShinRa wondering why he was on the phone at this godforsaken hour of the morning. "President, how lovely of you to –"

His false, playing-the-ignorant-citizen tone wasn't fooling the blonde boy. "Nothing is lovely!" he shouted. "I'm not lovely, my friends aren't lovely, this day isn't lovely, and Holy help me if you're going to be fucking lovely by the end of the conversation! The only lovely thing was my sleep, which was rudely interrupted because Scarlet just called me about your fucked-up Royal Guard trying to kill my Turks again this morning! So if you can still tell me one thing about this shit morning that even resembles lovely, I will hand you the keys to my goddamn office personally!"

"Now, Rufus," he began. This was not the wisest way to start a rebuttal to that rant, and he knew it, but he thought he would try to be rational with the irate boy. He and Rufus had had conversations like this before, and he hadn't won a single one yet. "I told Reeve when I spoke to him that these are not my orders and the rebels are acting completely of their own will, therefore I can't be held responsible."

"Oh, you can be held responsible," the president laughed. "I own the fucking newspapers, Godo. If I want you to be held responsible, I have to put one flyer on a back alley and everyone's going to know that it's war on Wutai again. So either control your goddamn henchmen or I'll personally come shove my shotgun up your ass."

Something about the way he'd said that made Godo aware that he meant it. Rather than rebut, he decided to let the young man have this one in his favor; besides, his people would go crazy if ShinRa, Incorporated even muttered the word War. "Okay, President, I understand. I will try my hardest to get in touch with Yushi and ask why she's led her squad to the Turks. Now, try to relax and tell Emerson to call me tomorrow morning."

Rufus didn't respond, just hung the phone up and rolled back over. He yawned, closed his eyes, and muttered, "Uncooperative prick."

The blonde's next major activity came almost five hours later, when the majority of the Turk paperwork had been done, and he used it to call a meeting among them. Reeve was on the phone with Chief Lodsen of the Junon Force, asking them to be on the lookout for any more Royal Guards. Scarlet had run off to talk with the city's planning committee about something she referred to as her 'ingenious masterpiece.' Reno had referred to her as full of shit and been kicked in the heel with one of her spiked dress shoes.

Heideggar and Palmer were as busy as anyone in Junon at the moment, the former getting the SOLDIERs into shape for the parade and the latter doing business deals with the local shop owners – discounts for friends of the company, lodging for the troops, the whole nine.

As for Hojo. . .no one wanted to know what he was doing with free reign of a half-clean lab and shiny new tools.

And so the Turks and Rufus were in the Presidential Suite, getting down to business. Elena was the only one who hadn't been there before, and was looking around with her mouth hanging open. Gold-plated everything, a huge television, a four-post bed with satin sheets and chocobo-feather pillows, a hot tub larger than any she'd ever seen, and about anything else a hotel room should come with, just multiplied by. . .some insanely impossible number. All in all, it was a palace without the privacy.

She glanced at the door, saw the thumbprint and retina scanners, and decided it was just a palace.

"Elena." Rufus' soft, patient call got her attention and he smiled at her. "I don't suppose any of your co-workers mentioned that you were almost stabbed this morning." Her face lost a tone. "Judging by your reaction, then, is it safe you assume you didn't see the samurai thrown from the balcony and impaled on the railing?" A bit whiter. "And can I safely guess that you aren't aware that this will happen at least five more times in the next month?" He got the face that said 'I'm gonna be sick,' then decided his work was done. "I just felt you should know these things, Miss Simms."

Tseng stared at the floor. He knew that wasn't only to inform her, but had two more hidden purposes. She'd just been shown how secret and efficient her tiny cell of the company was, even if she didn't know it, but even deeper yet there was a meaning. It was a scare tactic. Elena would, from this day to the end of hers, never sleep as long as she had last night; she would never again sleep through the door opening, she would never again let someone sneak up behind her, and she would never fall unconscious during a mission. It was a way of assuring efficiency, second only to a Mako infusion. It was mind over matter, in a sense, only because the matter wasn't at hand right now.

It was obvious that Rufus had learned a few things from his father, and damned if he hadn't picked up the best tricks of the job.

He turned in his chair, facing the four Turks on their two couches. Tseng, as was proper for the leader, stood against the wall, and Reno was more than happy to stretch out on the vacated space. "Reassignment, Turks," their boss said. "I have one more field job for you to do here in Junon, then I'm relieving you from the AVALANCHE crusade and reassigning your focus to the Royal Guards. Surely you can't take on the largest terroristic threat to the Planet while you watch your own backs."

Tseng was still under the illusion that there were forty-seven armed threats after them, or else he would have objected. Seventeen was good enough for the other three and they just agreed when their superior accepted the reassignment on behalf of them.

"Good," the president said, sounding more cheerful. "Now, then. Tseng, you and Rudolph are relieved of usual Turk duties as of now." He stood and clasped his arms behind his back. "Dismissed. Good luck, you two."

Tseng offered him a small smirk, which Reno coughed at. This earned him another kick in the foot as the two left the room, a kick he complained about for no less than forty seconds once they had. It was enough time for Rufus to situate himself and take a drink of water. Elena sat politely with her hands in her lap and tried not to think about five more people sneaking up on her while she was in bed.

"You two will be given the last field assignment for the Turks until this whole rebellion mess with Wutai is cleared. Reno, I'm sure you're familiar with Dick's Armaments."

A chill fell over the one addressed. Dick was a force to be reckoned with, and unfortunately, his store was stocked only with more forces. He'd talked to the man once and decided he was a trigger-happy old guy who wouldn't think twice about shooting a customer who lipped off; if Rufus mentioned they were having a conflict with him, it meant business. "Yessir."

A thin smile crossed the other's face. He knew the entire thought process Reno had just gone through. "I know what this brings forth in your mind and, unfortunately, the planning committee is having an issue with old Dick. They want to use his explosives for the parade and he's not budging. The Force tried to confiscate everything he had and he locked himself to the cage he keeps his stuff in with a shotgun. Holy only knows where the key is, but the old man's a hell of a shot. We need him taken out." He picked up a manilla folder and held it out for his Turks to take.

Reno's left eye narrowed. He read Rufus, and he could read him well. They'd been getting false briefings for so long that it was old hat to him. "Bullshit," he said flatly. "There's a catch."

This was expected.

"The catch is, Reno, that he's rumored to have at least fifteen war vets in the cage who agree with his argument." Reno fell back against the couch, covered his face, and whispered, "Shit." Rufus nodded. "All of them shoot as well as the day they enlisted, and they're sitting on crates and crates of dynamite and fireworks. One shot gone awry and we could decimate a block of apartments. Not only would the supply be shot, but the cleanup would cost more than the Junon wing has right now. So the real problem is that we _need_ the pyrotechnics for my inauguration, so says the Parade Committee. No ifs, ands, or buts about it."

Elena had been listening carefully, and was suddenly hit with just what she'd gotten herself into. There were the practical jokes, the barfights, the dirty jokes at respectable restaurants. At the other end, there was the business, the killing, and the kidnappings. But not once had a Turk said, "What about my life?" She'd just caught on to the fact that they were one hundred percent expendable from the day they took the suit.

Either that or they just didn't give a damn.

They were dismissed shortly after that and told to go to the Force station for some anti-riot gear. Once there, Elena was finally given a gun and Reno was handed a tranquilizer gun. He was to go in first and neutralize as many vets as he could before Elena came in blasting. They argued over who should get what, and she was finally swayed once told the cost of the darts and how important it was to hit them in just the right spot.

They sat outside Dick's Armaments later that day, going over the plan once more. It was pretty straightforward; Reno went in without warning and started shooting with the darts. Once he'd gotten them all – not likely – or the remainder of them was hiding behind crates – much more probably – and given the signal, Elena came in from the side door and took them out without hitting any of the crates.

When Reno was sure she had this down to a tee, he threw the folder away, jumped up, and started skipping around in preparation. She could see in his eyes that this type of thing really got him excited, and suddenly thought she couldn't do it for the rest of her life. 'No choice now,' said the logical side of her, and she kept repeating this mantra until the second Reno kicked his door down.

She listened to the firefight from where she was stationed, just down the hall of the complex, and watched her hands shake. _I can't I can't I can't I can't!_ her mind screamed, but she wouldn't listen to it. The small _fwip_ sounds of the darts were as clear as day to her, beyond the shouting of crazy old men and one Turk, and the blasts of their guns. Slowly the sound of guns became quieter, fewer and fewer differences in the noise, but the darts were at steady intervals.

At Reno's whistle, the signal, she slammed her shoulder into the door and rolled into the room, behind the desk they promised would be there. She wondered for a moment who would make the inside of their counter out of a mirror, then decided not to get sidetracked as a bullet whizzed by her knee.

Definitely not what she'd been thinking of her life when Reno had flown across the hotel room this morning.

She closed her eyes for a moment and listened hard. She could pick out what sounded like four different guns, and two shotguns. Some of the old men must have been damn close to blind, because shots went so far as to hit the wrong side of the room. With the promise in her mind that Rufus may have overestimated these old guys, she rolled toward the wall and stood up.

Reno was impressed. When the whole mess was over, she'd wasted only two shots and left old Dick alive. He applauded her when she walked over to him, panting and shaking like mad. "Way to go, Rookie. Looks like you can shoot to kill after all. What'd you guys think?"

With her mind in such a haze, the blonde hadn't even noticed that, aside from Reno, fifteen dead men were clapping. When she finally realized this, she could even see Tseng in the corner with a pistol and a convincing, fake bullet hole in his chest. She absently looked at the bar she'd ducked behind and noted the one-way mirror preventing an actual shot hitting her. It took a moment for this realization to hit her, too:

That hadn't been field work. . .that was a field _test._

Suddenly she was clutching Reno's suit, half-crying-half-laughing into his chest in relief. In a rare show of affection, he reached around and patted her on the back and he looked as proud as a father whose son just caught his first ball. Or killed his first war traitor. It was all the same look in ShinRa.

Dick opened a crate, took his cane out, and hobbled over with the help of Tseng. He smiled with his chipped teeth and black gums, tapping the rookie on the shoulder. She didn't turn around, but he still said, "Fifty-eight years ago, I went through the same test, Girlie. It's all downhill from today."

If someone had told Reeve that when he'd joined the Turks – it was a short stint before they moved him directly to Head of Urban Development – he would have been hunting them down at this very moment and probably shooting them in the face within seven more.

Godo had answered his phone only once and had nothing nice to say to him. Even his secretary had stopped giving him messages, and the press in Wutai all seemed too busy to broadcast an announcement to the head of their country. The Force had their eyes open for any suspicious activity, but with Sephiroth running around, they said they couldn't promise anything fantastic. The mess of this morning had been cleaned up surprisingly quickly, but he was striking out on information otherwise.

There was also something Godo didn't like about hearing that the most recent death was Yushi herself.

On the opposite end of the city, Scarlet was feeling. . .well, just the opposite. Her plan had gone through the examination with flying colors, had been deemed a 'very good idea under the circumstances,' and she'd even gotten her next prototype tested while she was at it. She had a feeling it was because the head of the committee, Ricky, had gotten a look down her dress accidentally, but there were some things she would do to get her way. Hell, they even said construction would

She was standing on the curb, wondering just how she should treat herself for such an accomplishment, when Rude walked out of the tattoo parlor across the street. She called out and met him where he was, asking what it was he'd been looking at in there.

He held out his hand, palm down, and showed her the small 5 on the skin between his forefinger and his thumb. "I realized when I opened the paper this morning that today's my five-year anniversary as a Turk. Figured I'd celebrate." He cocked an eyebrow, which was the Rude sign for a sheepish smile.

"Kya ha ha!" Scarlet cackled at him, finding this terribly amusing. "You celebrate your fifth year by telling no one and going out to get a three-millimeter number on the back of your hand? Holy, Rude, at least come to dinner with me; we can hit your old bar while we're in town."

The old bar was a place he couldn't refuse. When the Turks had actually operated out of Junon three years ago, he and Reno had made it a point to go to the same bar every Tuesday. There were never real regulars there except for those two, as most of the people going to a bar in Junon needed to relax before making the rest of the journey across the sea to Costa del Sol. They were probably the closest things the owner – her name escaped him after so long – had to concrete barflies.

He reminisced aloud to her as they made their way to the heart of Junon, more importantly the business district. There they found Reno, in casual thug clothes and a black wig, making a kill off Three-Card Monty with some naïve vacationers. Without his scars showing, they might have passed him completely. It was, of course, their duty to smash his card table and drag him away by the elbows, "forgetting" to return the people's money.

They put him down inside the door of the building they'd been headed to. He grinned, pulled off the wig, and said, "Nice tat, asshole. Elena's asleep at the hotel, or I'd call and ask if she wants to go on a blind date." He looked around at the hallway and his eyes lit up. "The Clod! Holy shit, we're back at The Clod!" He raced up the stairs before they could stop him.

Rude looked at his friend and shrugged. "Reno's got a thing for the owner. Don't worry, though; no threat to you."

"If only because I'm a much bigger threat to him," she laughed, taking her time in getting to the top of the stairs. She noticed on her way up that this was in no way even close to being the best bar in town. The wallpaper was peeling, the stairs creaked, the whole place smelled like homeless people, but the bar itself was in better shape. Neon lights welcomed her, coupled with three tables and a blasting television. The owner, whose name was Richie – this was assumed because Reno squealed it at the top of the steps – looked kind of frazzled but still smiled wildly at all of them, not seeming to mind Reno throwing himself over the bar and latching onto her neck.

"Reno!" she shouted. "Holy, it's been so long since you were in town!" She glanced over his shoulder. "And you brought Deathmobile!"

Rude gave one of his rare smiles and walked over to shake Richie's hand, Scarlet following him closely. "She calls me Deathmobile," he explained, "because my last name's Hurst. First time I told her, she thought it was Hearse. Never stopped calling me that, I guess." He stepped around Scarlet and nudged her forward. "Richie, this is Reno's fiancée, Scarlet. She runs Weapons Development at ShinRa."

Richie shoved Reno off her with a smirk and shook Scarlet's hand as well. "I know who this is. Big fan, Miss Chas – Mrs. Dran – umm. . ." She laughed nervously and rubbed at her neck, obviously confused on how to address someone so important in limbo.

"Name's Scarlet," she said simply.

She came to find out that Richie was a huge supporter of ShinRa and had given the Turks a lot of moral encouragement through their training. They went on for about half an hour about amusing and embarrassing things the boys had done when they had come into The Clod regularly. It was after this and a few free drinks that the tone changed, though.

Richie smiled. "Ah, I'm really glad you guys stopped in one last time."

The bigger man took a drink. "One last time?"

"Bar's closing next week," she sighed, turning the TV set down. "Ten years and I'm finally saying good-bye to this place." She looked around nostalgically. "Oh, I'll miss sitting in her every night, but I suppose it's for the better."

Reno had gotten a few more drinks than the rest of them and was feeling awfully sentimental. He looked up from where he was, head down on the bar, and muttered, "Whaddafuck, you dyin' on us or somethin'?" He could talk normally when his jaw was free to move.

"Oh, hell, no," Richie laughed. "You would've gotten a call if I was dying, Reno. No, I met somebody. Name's Johnny; he lived in the slums when I met him, but we just bought a house in Kalm. Red hair, always wears a leather jacket."

The other redhead cocked his head to the side, which ended in his ear to the bar. "Johnny? Yeah, I think I ran into 'im at Seventh Heaven a few times. Lanky guy, swears up a storm when he's sloshed. Yeah, 'at's Johnny." He stared at his glass. "Always had a thing for redheads, yeah?" Before she could respond, he'd sat up so fast he almost threw himself off the barstool, looking more sober in that second. "Fuck, Rude! The Clod's closing! We gotta get some cats in here. Friends, I mean, not real fuckin' cats. What're you, stupid? Nah, hell, call everybody. Tseng, Reeve, Elena, Palmer, Heideggar, Hojo if you can get him outta that pit!"

He grabbed for his PHS and Richie squealed. "Wow, all the major ShinRa executives here! We're gonna make The Clod proud tonight!"

Scarlet found something terribly interesting about that statement, and had a notepad out after Rude got off the phone and said Reeve would be there soon. He asked what she was doing and she shrugged, eyes twinkling. "You'll see, I'm sure."

Elena was the only one not at the bar that night, and she loved it. She loved it especially when she woke up soon after the door closed, and saw the note that said:

**Call if you need me.  
Went to the bar.**

**-Tseng**

She had a nice room-service dinner and went to bed early, content with her lifestyle choice after seeing how proud of her everyone had been that afternoon. She was content, anyway, until one in the morning, when a drunken stampede trampled through the suite, tearing off their clothes as they went, and leapt into the pool as one big group.

Elena looked at the ceiling and smiled bitterly, telling it, "I can deal with this. I'll sleep in tomorrow. Because they're going to be hung-over as all hell." She rolled over and went to sleep without a hitch.


	7. I Never Told You

**Author's Note**: For those of you playing favorites, a chapter of **In Stride** is also in the works, so no worries. My writing camp helped out a lot with wanting to update. Song title goes to My Chemical Romance. Hurrah for emo.

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**Strange Bedfellows:**

**I Never Told You What I do for a Living**

-

Reno awoke with a splitting headache, an momentary inability to stand on his own two feet, and his arm asleep from being, well, slept on, and for that he admonished himself. He lost his pants and had to wear Scarlet's, which he would catch hell for, Rude was nowhere in sight for him to interrogate groggily, the rookie was the only one alone in a bed, and for that he hated at least three people. Tseng and Rufus weren't passed out by each other, so either they thought it was something still unfit for the public eye or they'd had a fight, which made him think at least two people were pansies about affection. No one had made hangover-curbing coffee, Richie had followed them back and passed out in the bathroom so he couldn't shower, and his hair was a mess, making him despise drinking for the third time that week.

As perhaps the coup de gras on the situation, someone had delivered a paper and he slipped on the plastic wrapping as he left the room, sending him onto his ass. The door clicked to a lock behind him before he realized he had no keycard.

This either meant that normality was coming back in a flamingly redundant ball of glory or that Elena's plague was as strong as ever.

He stole the slippers and cup of coffee from a room service tray that had stopped to drop something off to a pleasantly unattractive woman and donned the former while drinking the latter, never missing a step. The elevator gave off a rather condescending _ding _as it arrived on the fifth floor, and he left it on the first with a Reno-spirited, "Fuck you, too," upsetting a church group on their way to the fourth floor chapel.

On the good side of the early-morning spectrum was Rude sitting in the lounge, presentable in a suit and gingerly eating a croissant. The paper was folded and propped up on his knee as his other hand nursed a glass of orange juice. The scene was ruined by the staggering redhead in ugly, brown slippers and tight jeans with a ragged T-shirt coming to collapse on the couch next to him and ask, "How long've you been up, where can I get smokes, and how much are those?"

Reno was perfectly coherent in the morning, but his body language did well to blow anyone else's realization of that.

"Took a drive over to the building to check on the planning committee about three hours ago," Rude yawned. He checked his watch to make sure, splattering one of the Opinions columns with orange juice as he did, but avoided his pants. "Parade's all set for tomorrow, and it looks great. I saw a pack of cigarettes in the room that looked like yours, come to think of it, which you unfortunately don't have a key to." Reno opened his mouth to ask, but he was cut off: "Scarlet's clothes are so tight you couldn't hide a toothpick, Reno." He looked over at his friend. "Though they do well to show off your wonderful ass."

If the bald man hadn't been kidding, Reno might have shot him with the gun he didn't currently have. "You remind me vaguely of a big, homoerotic bear, and I now have the urge to go play in the morning rush hour." Despite that, he flipped over and put his feet up. "And the food?"

Rude shrugged. "Stopped by a train of gypsies on my way back from the committee and they gave it to me. Shelled out about ten gil and wished the best on finding that whole Promised Land thing they're headed for. I'd point you toward them, but I see you didn't bother to grab your keys and I'm not letting you drive the rental with mine if you look like that."

These snappy, witty responses were what made Rude an excellent Turk, and they both knew it. Sharing a chuckle, the two lapsed into comfortable silence and Reno almost dozed off on the couch.

Rude was feeling no ill effects from a night of drinking, as was usual for the big man. He and Reno had sat down and figured out the equation for it, thus reaffirming their belief in a higher power. Given how large Rude was, it took an awful lot of alcohol to get him drunk, and with enough alcohol in him to do so, it meant that he had also spent a large sum of gil. Looking back on his life, the man's karma was astounding, and the two had concluded it was an act of the higher powers, seeing his sacrifice of gil for a night of entertainment, to completely remove the hangover part.

"Hey, Reno," brought the one in question out of his daze and he muttered a response. "What is it that Scarlet sees in you?"

"Thanks, asshole," the redhead deadpanned.

Rude closed his newspaper with a shake of his head. "No, not like that. I mean, what is it that keeps someone like her, a woman who blows shit up for a living and only gets a bad reputation for it, head-over-heels with a person like you or me? We lie, we steal, we kill. . ." He saw where it might click, but the question had been floating around in his head for a while and it wasn't worth spoiling it now that he'd asked someone.

The shorter man stared at the high ceiling, ignoring everyone busying themselves around the conversation. "Honestly," he began with a smirk, "I've asked everyone I can and I still don't know what the hell it is she sees in a guy like me, but we're happy. I s'pose it's that she knows the shit I go through and can kinda sympathize if I just wanna come over to her place and fall asleep on her couch sometimes." He paused. "My killer looks could be the icing on the cake, though. Why, you interested in her? 'Cause, eh, I can be swayed for enough gil."

Truth be told, anyone who even seriously approached him with the intention of making a pass at Scarlet would soon find themselves hooked up to a rather interesting contraption in the closet of his bedroom called the Weasel Fucker. It was fun to unleash on someone, but the carpet-cleaning bill had been massive last time.

Aside from his lack of any sort of intent, Rude had seen it go to work and he would never suggest such a thing.

"I'm not sure." He looked down at the number he'd had tattooed on his hand. "It's starting to bother me that when I celebrate one year or five years of something, it always has to do with just me. I guess a bit of it might be that I'm getting lonely, old, and badly reputed. But I think I might actually be lonely."

This one caught Reno off guard. "You? Rudolph Hurst? Mr. I-Hate-How-Loud-Fluorescent-Lights-Are? Lonely?"

"Look," the other man sighed. "I know it might sound stupid to you, but sometimes it really is depressing to go home to a big house without anyone to talk to. The bar helps, the phone helps, but sometimes I just wish I'd have something to come home to."

The redhead always had something to come home to, despite it usually just being a bottle. But at the same time he knew he could always see Scarlet. It had never occurred to him that his old friend might need someone besides him someday. "Ah, cheer up," he said. "If instinct serves me right, I'm pissing the rookie off enough to drive her straight at you." He gave that signature smirk. "Hell, if I was gay, I'd help you out myself."

Rude was touched, in a very unsettling way.

Both of them, though they gave it no thought, immediately turned their minds to Tseng on that topic of conversation. He'd awoken to the slamming of the door and the fall of Reno. Noticing no one else was awake but his two missing Turks, he donned his suit for the day, took the remaining room key, and left. He also found the way the elevator arrived to be a bit snobbish, and did his best to scuff the walls of it with his shoes on the way down.

Instead of going toward the lounge, he checked his watch and exited out the side of the hotel. It was almost noon and he had a lunch date to keep. After about ten minutes in the rental car, which had been given to them while they stayed in Junon, he found himself at the Olive Branch, a very upscale diner with only the highest security.

Perfect for the grounds of this meeting.

The bouncer, whose oversized suit hid the mass of bulk he'd shown off in order to get the job, let him past with a nod and a small smile. If there was anyone qualified to enter the Olive Branch, a place renamed some years ago for the war-ending conference that had been held inside, it was Tseng. Reeve was a close second, but if they were pitted against each other in negotiation skills, he would have easily stepped back and let the Wutain have it.

It was for this reason that he was so relaxed in walking through the dark place, his feet sinking into their expensive carpeting, taking in the glances of everyone he passed. Head held up and walking tall, he nodded to those he recognized from his many years in the business and met the stare of anyone he didn't, perhaps trying to challenge him, with the eyes of steel that let him get into the restaurant.

But today, he wasn't here to start a war, nor was he here to stop it. Sitting down at one of the more secluded tables, he looked across at his guest with those same eyes.

She was a small woman, much shorter than he, but seemed to be as comfortable with the situation as he was. He couldn't see her face, as it was covered with a black veil, and her hands were hidden by long white gloves that disappeared beneath her dress sleeves, but he'd seen it before and knew it well. "You called me here," he stated coolly.

They hadn't seen each other in maybe three years, and it had been hard for them to do so. With so much between two people, his vacating Wutai altogether, so suddenly, had left a huge hole in her life, and it was time to at least pretend it was filled for a moment. And so she had called him to a very brief meeting in the most secure place on the face of the Planet, if only to stare at him across the table and take in everything she'd missed.

The woman didn't remove the veil as she spoke, changing the conversation into the Wutain tongue. "I did," she replied. "You're so business-like, Tseng. I just wanted to know how you've been since you left Wutai. . ."

There was a sound of regret in her voice, but he didn't let it phase him. He was as numb to the situation as ever. "I've been well." He took a drink of water from the glass that awaited his attention. "No doubt you've heard about the elite guard coming after the Turks recently?"

"Of course," she sighed. "Obviously you're healthy, but how are the others?"

He tapped his thumb on the table, hearing the reassuring sound of his ring hitting it. "So far we're all in good condition. Rude and Reno are perfectly fine, both have their health. I don't know if I told you that Reno and Scarlet are getting married soon?" There was no response, but he didn't let that change his demeanor. "Our newest, Elena, is a bit shaken by the whole thing, but at the rate they send the samurai, we should have no problem fending them off." There was an uncomfortable silence and his stoic attitude cracked. "I wish you could take the veil off," he said, lowering his voice. "I'd like to see you again."

The woman hesitated, then moved a hand to the bottom of it. Tseng's arm immediately shot across the table, eyes wide. "No!" he demanded quietly, looking around and making sure he hadn't drawn too much attention. "No one knows. This is not the time to start. Being so closely affiliated with someone such as myself, who knows what they might do to you if they could recognize you?"

Tseng couldn't see it, but he could tell she was crying. If he'd been able to even say her name, it would have reassured her. In the dim lighting, she took a deep breath and calmed herself, standing and pushing her chair out. "In that case," she whispered. "I suppose I should go." He stood as well and met her halfway around the table, embracing her. "It's good to see your face outside a televison," she murmured into his chest. "I've missed your smile."

Just for her, he held her back and cracked one. "We'll meet again soon. Just give the word; you know where to find me."

She nodded, hat moving with her head. Again, she hugged him about the waist and squeezed him tightly, knowing he could die at any moment and she should cherish the ones he gave up to be with her. "Goodbye, Tseng," she said as she let go, turned, and elegantly moved away from the table.

He kept smiling and watching her as he pulled the sunglasses from his breast pocket, knowing it wasn't proper for a Turk's eyes to fill with tears in the middle of a business meeting. That was what everyone around them thought it was, after all. Barely above a breath, he said to her small, Wutain backside, "Goodbye, Mother."

He composed himself and left the Olive Branch after he knew she was long gone back to wherever she was staying. Turks were supposed to sever all family ties when they joined, but his mother had been one person he couldn't just leave with his silk robes and treks about Da-Chao. Someone in a controversial position such as head of the Turks couldn't have family members openly visiting them, and he hadn't seen his own mother's face in over eight years. It killed him, but at the same time they always had the meetings.

Rufus was the only one who knew of where Tseng went when he left the building to see "the woman in the funeral dress." With his permission, it was technically okay for these meetings to take place and the tie to be held, but at the same time, anyone could be following him at any time and it wasn't a position he wanted to put his mother in if she were to show her face. And so he was content with five minutes here, an hour there. Reno had walked into Turtle's Paradise the last time they had met and his mother had immediately changed the subject to business; flawlessly at that.

Reno was told she was an informant whose name he didn't know.

When Tseng got back to the rental car, the ringing of his phone welcomed him and he scrambled to open the door. He caught it just in time, answering with a casual, "Hello?"

Reeve's voice was a welcomed one. "Tseng," he sighed, sounding pleased about something. "I just got a call from the planning committee and they said they're done with your office. Apparently, Rufus wants you to go over and finalize the permits for the parade." There was a muffled yell, something about not wanting to leave just yet, then the older man returned. "Sorry. Scarlet wants to go shopping and feels like dragging me with. But. . .umm. . .oh, yeah. Head over to your office as soon as possible."

"Okay, Reeve. I'll see you later." Tseng put the car into gear.

Reeve said nothing else before hanging up and surveying the room. As much time as everyone had spent at the Clod the night before, they'd actually left it fairly untouched. There were clothes strewn about, of course, but otherwise there were only a few things to throw away. It was possible that they'd gotten into the habit again of hiding the trash beneath their clothing again, because no one wanted to wake up and be pissed they had to clean. In a way, he was proud of them; it usually ended in the state that caused them to flee the hotel early.

From under the white lump of coat in the corner, Rufus' muffled voice floated. "Thank you, Reeve."

Rufus, a polar opposite to Rude in more ways than one, was extraordinarily so when it came to hangovers. His head was giving him a little preview of exactly what they'd borrowed from Dick's Armaments in the way of explosives, and he didn't like it one bit. He was a fun drunk, he was, dare he be presumptuous, a _happy _drunk, but it didn't do anything to deprive him of the aches and pains the morning after.

Even Scarlet didn't like to screw with the blonde boy when he was in this kind of a mood, and she quietly dragged Reeve out of the room with her. She was in a hurry and pulling clothes on as she went – _her _clothes – and the Urban Development manager next to her knew how disappointed she was that there wasn't a desperate man in the hallway to manipulate into giving her gil.

The two of them were in a discussion about the parade and the events to follow, and failed to notice the chiming of the elevator, a thing it was very thankful for in its inanimate way. Scarlet did point out the scuff marks, but the connection was never made and they got to the lounge without feeling any hostility toward the hotel.

"Mornin', Babe."

It was strange enough for Reeve to turn around quickly and see Reno there, wearing Scarlet's jeans and slippers he knew the redhead hadn't owned yesterday, but what really got his skin crawling was that Reno was looking at him with that look on his face, arms open and awaiting a hug, food clutched in both hands. Reeve kept his distance. "You know, I might've done it if I hadn't seen the pants. Good effort, though."

The blonde woman grabbed his elbow and hurriedly dragged him away from his tormentor. "Sorry, Reno, gotta go. Shopping. I'll catch up with you later. Love you, bye."

The sentences were simple, but she'd blurted it out and Reno stood wondering why he'd just heard her say 'bar-hopping' and 'lemon pie' in the same sentence. Shrugging it off, he bit off a chunk of his muffin and returned to the companionship of Rude.

Reeve had been given a personal rental car, given the nature of the positions he held, the same model as everyone else's. His key fit both locks, so he didn't know he'd gotten into the right car until he checked the radio presets.

The other car was parked outside of the Junon response to the ShinRa Building and stayed there until about ten that night. Tseng had finalized the paperwork hours ago, but decided it wouldn't hurt to get a bit of the extra done and relax tomorrow. He'd lost track of time around five, despite only the ticking of the clock keeping him company.

His company didn't know this until they were inside, which was a shame for them.

Hearing the arrival of a guest or two – it didn't matter how many, as no one was scheduled to come in and anyone there from ShinRa would have called from the door – he continued with his paperwork and was almost completely unsurprised when his door was kicked open. "Would you mind terribly the concept of telling me what it is you're trying to accomplish?" he asked, raising his voice only enough to be heard over the tapping of shoes.

Five pairs of shoes.

Belonging to the five samurai that now had him surrounded, each light on their feet, anxious to get this over with, and confused by the impassive look on his face. One spoke, his tone of voice suggesting he was trying to show off to his little brigade. "Each one of us has been in some way been hurt by the outcome of the war long ago!" he barked. "The Turks' involvement is no secret to us, and we've come here on behalf of the grudge our ancestors held on yours to right a terrible wrong!"

Despite being completely ludicrous grounds for such a meeting, Tseng replied with a sound, "Mmmhm." He'd stood while hearing the explanation, and now pulled off his suit jacket, carefully draping it over the back of his chair. "Oh, I'm sorry. Please, just one moment, would you?" He removed a hair tie from around his pen holder, a present from Scarlet on his last birthday, and put it to use. He held up a finger as he did so, and again when he unbuttoned the cuff of his dress shirt, allowing a chain to fall into his hand.

Checking it for kinks, he finally turned his attention back to the squad that looked so eager to cut him into bits. "I'm sorry, I totally forgot why you were here for a moment. By all means." He coolly held his arms out to the side in the universal sign of procession.

Ten minutes later a call was placed to the front desk, and a janitor was at the door to his office in five more. What he saw made him pale, and he was going to vomit into one of the trash bags into the corner until he saw what was inside.

Tseng looked up from his desk, feeling his back crack as he did. He did up the last button on his suit jacket and smiled kindly. "Ah, there you are, Burt. Yes, I was going to ask you for the trash bags, but as you can see, I found some from when Reno was trying to make the giant water balloons. I do, however, need a replacement coffee pot if you have one." He kicked gently at the trash can, hearing the sound of broken glass shifting around. "I think that's the only damage to ShinRa property, if you ignore the carpet. And on that note, if your leg is still giving you too much trouble to join us for the parade, do you think you could give it a nice bleaching tomorrow?" Burt's face wasn't exactly serene. "I hate to be a bother. I mean, I'd do it myself, but I'm entirely too swamped."

Again, there was no response from the janitor, but the Turk took this as an affirmative.

"Thanks, Burt, you're a true help." He took a new paper from his incoming pile and gave it a quick skim, not having heard his company move from the doorway. "Remove the electrical tower from the shore," he read, sounding incredulous. "Honestly, the nerve of some people."

If Burt hadn't been seventy-four and arthritic, he might have ended up snorting cocaine off a prostitute that night instead of going home the next morning to his wife's leftover lasagna. Something told him that getting arrested before the sun came up might be in his best interests anyway.


	8. Broadway

**Author's Note**: So here's my return to. . .well, here. After a long while and a bit of a challenge between myself and Sabriel41, I've come back with a new chapter to Strange Bedfellows – and hopefully not the last. A special shout-out goes to a long-time reader and reviewer, **illist**, who's ( probably unknowingly ) helped me keep writing and not let me give this up yet. Thank you, whoever you are. xD Chapter title to Goo Goo Dolls, because they're still awesome.

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**Strange Bedfellows: Broadway**

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At 10:00 AM, Rufus stood in front of a full-length mirror, taking himself in. Although he was instinctively vain, what with the glad-handing he'd been getting all his life due to his relations, it was all gone at this point. Instead of looking at himself as Pretty Boy Rufy, as one of his roommates in college had always called him -- roommate and college were loose terms, as he'd gone to school on company property and did nothing but sleep in his dorm between classes and work -- he was looking at himself in an entirely new way.

Today, and for a long while afterward, he would have to gauge himself instead as President Rufus ShinRa.

For a long while, standing where he was now with a tailor at his elbow, he'd tried to do it on his own. _But I know what I have to do_, he thought sadly. _I have to see myself as someone my father would either approve or disapprove of._

He was fairly certain that the tailor's arm, holding a measuring tape up for the past five minutes, was wavering more each second, and so he decided he was ready with a nod of the head. Rufus turned and took in the white suit coat, almost identical to the last, and the rest of the suit it came with. He could almost feel the building under him thunder with almost seven-hundred employees, and for the first time, he really thought of them as his.

"Julia," he called, and the woman turned, a few pins stuck in her mouth. He had one last question, and whether or not he really wanted to hear the answer, it was one he would have to ask. Remembering every day of preparation leading up to this, he took a breath, seemed to try and make himself taller, and asked, "Would he be proud?"

Julia had been a close personal friend of Rufus' for quite some time. When he'd been twelve years old and still over-protected, she'd been his 'babysitter' for a few months before his mother's jealousy of her had taken hold and she'd been fired on-spot. He'd learned quite a bit about himself in those few months, though; things he felt he probably shouldn't mention to anyone. Secretly, he'd kept contact with her, and as soon as he'd been given the office and the power, his first proposition as Vice President was to hire her back into her position as a tailor. His father had agreed, and it was the only time he and the boy had done anything behind his mother's back, right up to the day she died.

The black-haired, slightly aging woman set down her things, took the pins out of her mouth, and went over to the new president to straighten his lapels. "There's no doubt in my mind."

Elsewhere in the building, it was much less casual.

Tseng was taking so many phone calls that once he switched over to another line, informed Reno to fuck off and stop messing with his head, and was met with a very unhappy response from one of the parade sponsors. This resulted in two more, one to an equally displeased parade coordinator and another to Reeve, who quickly muttered, "I'll send flowers," and helpfully hung up.

His redheaded subordinate was happily ignoring all real work and spraying soda through a straw at anyone who walked into their offices. The time between these visits was passed by half-heartedly doing paperwork and going for the occasional smoke break.

It was, admittedly, more work than he had done in a long time, but the Wutain man still craned his neck and yelled out the door, "Don't you have anything_ helpful_ you could do, Reno?!" He wasn't sure whether he was impressed or frightened that he was replied to with an awestruck ". . .Yes," but Reno left the office a few minutes later nonetheless.

Rude, who had taken it upon himself quite some time ago to keep tabs on his fellow Turks, was at the door a moment later. "Aren't you afraid of where he's going, Boss?"

He shrugged and took a sip of coffee, having momentarily used the wonderful technology of the Junon building to have his calls held for the next five minutes. "Rude, as Reno's best friends, you and I are completely aware that if he does anything too destructive, he'll never pin the blame on us; his ego is far too large to let us take credit for his work." He stood and excused himself to the restroom.

The bald man shrugged once he was gone, took a quick look at something on his desk, and retreated to his own. It was an empty office for the moment, what with Elena having been called off – much to everyone's surprise – on some "last minute business," and he basked in that for as long as it lasted before his phone rang.

Reno's phone also rang shortly afterward, and before he could greet his friend, he was met with a snappy, "Tseng pissed off a sponsor. We need a filler float. Reeve said it's your fault. Go," followed by the usual click. He tried to take a drag off his cigarette and ended up stabbing himself in the eye with the filter – ever since his arm had gotten banged up in the pillar incident, his hand-eye coordination had been flickering between eagle eye and quadriplegic.

He checked his watch. He double-checked the time on the big digital display over the cafeteria counter, because he couldn't read analog; the watch had come with the suit and made a good mirror. He quickly cancelled his rather large order, ran out the doors, skidded to a halt in the middle of the hallway. He ran down it, leapt over an oncoming lunch cart, and launched himself into a closing elevator. When he realized everyone was too busy with the parade to have seen that, he remembered why he was in a rush. _Floor nineteen. I need the first. _He reached out for the button and saw that some prick had pressed them all.

And he was positive it had been Elena.

The irony of it was that it had been Rufus, boredly walking by a panel in his office and setting off all the buttons on every elevator in the building. Had he seen Reno, he would have stopped that particular one out of a sudden urge to be nice to his Turks, but he'd gotten distracted by the door opening. He looked over and smiled. "Perfect."

Reno threw himself from the elevator about five minutes later, opting to take the stairs down from the tenth floor – a secretary had caught him and stopped him on the thirteenth, having forgotten her reading glasses and needing someone to read a birthday card for her – and when he'd finally reached the lobby, it was to a blocked door. A political activist, he'd come to find out later, had driven her truck through the building's front door and refused to move it until Rufus agreed not to move into the presidential spot.

He ran across the lobby and opened the door of the truck, ignoring the gun in his face. "My name's Reno, and if I have anything to say about it, that's close enough and they'd never make me president." He threw her out of her seat in the moment of confusion and drove it right back out of the lobby as the SOLDIERs took her away.

Eighteen minutes and a few phone calls later, Reno felt much better. He'd arranged a float for the parade and rerouted a few phone numbers out of boredom. He looked at his watch and realized that the parade wasn't for a few hours yet – he wouldn't have worried about it, but he'd gotten wrangled into the position of Presidential Float Driver. It was a job kind of like mopping the bathroom in Godo's pagoda. It was an honor, and a position of status, but there was still someone with a finger up your ass for his own amusement.

To make himself feel better, Reno drove himself to the nearest casino.

For one, the term casino didn't mean much in Junon. With Gold Saucer on the face of the Planet, no one even tried to compete with the prestige of the place, so no one else had opened a legitimate casino. Also, it was more fun for Junon dwellers to open illegal businesses in the hundreds of apartments overlooking the sea, so if you walked into the right building you could get into a high-stakes poker game without too much hassle.

He liked it that way. Reno was an excellent poker player for a number of reasons. First and most obvious of those reasons was that he could keep a straight face in any situation – he was a Turk, and that was a given. Second, he had that habit of making the other people at the table feel like they could trust him, which was the last thing they should've been doing. Third, he went into the games with his coat unbuttoned, his hair down, and his sunglasses in his pocket.

Straight and simple, he went into the games looking like a man who didn't have a lot. If a person didn't know his face, it made it even sweeter. But the fact of the matter was that Reno had all the gil in the world behind him, and he knew it.

"I'm a good poker player," he'd once said to Reeve while raking a hefty ten thousand in chips across the table one night, "because I don't give a shit."

He didn't. Reno couldn't have cared less if he won or lost a hand, and that made him win most of them. Whether sitting on a hand full of aces or six cards that couldn't have earned gil if they were paid to do it, the redhead didn't really care one way or the other if he left with stuffed pockets or missing his shirt. The company was his bank; they would reimburse him for any amount, no questions asked.

Reno walked into a room that held three scarred men all wearing the same color shirts. He knew it was a gang match and they would take the skin off his bones if he sat down long enough, but instead of letting it worry him, he gave them an awkward smile and dug into his pockets. "Well, the wife's gonna kill me for it, but there's a truck outside and that's all I've got." He threw the keys on the table and pulled up a milk crate.

Needless to say, the wife didn't kill him for it – mainly because it wasn't her truck at all. Instead, she was having the time of her life. She was yelling at complete strangers and getting paid for it.

Scarlet was riding a forklift around a vacated aircraft hangar near where the parade would begin, getting the floats checked out and into their proper order. Rufus' float dwarfed the rest of them on a gigantic scale, donned with red ShinRa banners that a person could probably identify from the sea. Underneath, it wasn't much to look at: a deactivated Mako tank with an elevated platform attached to the top and a framework covered in plywood around it.

Not too far beyond that, the weapons specialist came upon a wide open space with six men sitting in the middle, playing cards, not seeming to notice the float construction going on around them. They were dressed as respectably as six homeless men could be dressed. Whether they were actually homeless or not, Scarlet had her doubts, but she thought she would give them the benefits. They didn't even look up when she buzzed into view and stared at them for a few moments.

"Hey!" she shouted. One of the men looked up and adjusted his hat toward her. Behind him she noticed two large rolls of paper and a set of paintbrushes. "What the hell are you doing? Where's your float?"

Instead of responding, the man pulled out a picture and looked between it and Scarlet a few times. Then he shrugged and chewed on something that was already in his mouth. He wasn't the most sophisticated man. "We're on orders from the boss, lady." He motioned to the rolls of paper. "That's our float."

"Lady?" Scarlet smelled that something was up. She checked her clipboard. "This is supposed to be the float for the credit card company. And unless I'm getting real old, you aren't a credit card company. And whose boss? Rufus?"

"The boss," he said, and after a pause, he went back to his game.

Scarlet was losing her patience. These certainly weren't friends of Rufus'. Rufus didn't have friends and everyone knew it. He didn't have time to meet people. And if they were hiring trash like this for important events like these, she needed to have a talk with the blonde boy anyway. "Excuse me," she called, and the stranger looked back over. "I can't let you march, walk, or drive in this parade if you don't tell me what you're doing here right now."

The man stood and walked toward her. The other five kept on with their card game, like nothing was going on around them, let alone involving them. Their leader handed over a photograph of Scarlet, far past drunk at a bar, and a letter with handwriting that she recognized immediately. "He says that if I see that lady, tell her I'm here on the boss' orders. That's it." He walked away again and sat down with his friends, leaving her the note and the picture. He felt like that was the wisest thing to do.

She could have said many things, as was the case more often than not when you were working with people like this. Instead, after reading over the note two or three times, she just grinned and pocketed it. "Welcome to the parade," she said with a wave, and drove down the line to start complaining at the drycleaners again.

Reeve was also driving somewhere in Junon. He'd lost track of where he'd been, but he always knew where he was; the man seemed to have a compass lodged in his brain. Reno had given him that mental image, right before saying that he might've maybe just kind of crashed the Turk helicopter, but it was a complete accident, he promised, he'd just been flying out over the Wutai airfields, which airfields, Reno, oh, you know, the ones where they've got all the shiny machines, oh, those airfields, the restricted airfields, yeah, but he hadn't meant to, so it was okay, right, thanks. He'd bought Reeve a few drinks that night and their friendship had repaired itself as much as it ever would.

Again, Reeve was on the phone.

This time it was a pleasure call, and he was gleefully ignoring any other calls that tried to interrupt. Nothing had come from anyone at work, though, so he figured that was alright. Instead, Melissa had called him out of nowhere to ask a few questions about the president-to-be, and he decided that this was much more interesting.

"He's a good kid," said the Urban Development manager, taking a right. "He's got a hot head and bad ideas once in a while, but he really means well. His father was hell on the city and he told me just last night that he won't turn into him. Hell, maybe he'll even get rid of Corneo or something."

Melissa was quiet. The conversation had been a little heavy and tense since it had begun. "Emerson, all you're talking is nonsense to me, y'know." Melissa had been born and bred in Icicle Inn, and after the split, she'd retreated back there to be with her parents for a few years. She kept up with the big city news as little as possible – 'depressing,' she'd always said when Reeve had tried to tell her about something at work. "I just wondered, what with how long you've been working there and everything – well, I wondered if you might've taken the spot instead. I never knew the president had a son."

"Rufus? Oh, he's been working a lot harder than I have. I mean, he hasn't been doing it nearly as long, but. . ." Reeve trailed off. The idea of taking over ShinRa had never even crossed his mind, but now she had him thinking. There were people higher on the ladder than he was, of course, but they were military strategists and probably loved their jobs too much to give them up. He was the only one with true business, management, and foreign negotiation skills, so in a sense, he would be a logical choice for the presidency. Well, Hojo had his share of business skills, but anyone that put him into power would start fearing for his or her own life rather quickly – for a number of reasons. The thought of moving into that kind of position actually shook him up. "No, no way, Mel. There's no way I could do that. I'd have to deal with Heideggar. Palmer. Hojo. Oh, gods, Hojo," he laughed. "Yeah, there's no way I could take over. Imagine. Me, working over Professor Hojo."

"Those names mean nothing to me, Emerson."

Melissa meant well, he knew, but she was very serious and honest, and sometimes that bothered him. A heavy silence fell and he noticed how quiet the engine of the car was. "Well, listen," he heard her sigh on the other end of the line, "I'd love to talk some more, but it's a big day for you and I've got some things to do around the house, too, y'know?"

"Yeah. I guess I should be heading back anyway."

"Alright." He could hear her smile, but he wished she would have been there for the inauguration. "Listen, it's been great to talk. If you're ever in the area, give me a call, okay?"

He promised that he would, though he knew that she would find herself too busy for a meeting, and the conversation ended on its own. They hadn't spoken in months, and every silence between them was a little longer than the last. Sooner or later, he knew they'd stop talking altogether, and he wasn't sure how okay with that he was. As much as he tried to shut himself up with work and keep his eyes on the incoming papers, he missed her in the off time. Her indifference to his job was the most upsetting, he thought; he was doing so well and she would have nothing of it. She'd been an activist during the war, though, before they'd met, and he couldn't possibly expect her to stay with someone that worked in the very business she abhorred so much. Of course, that only made him wonder what would happen if he just qu –

His phone rang and he answered immediately when he saw it was Tseng. "Yeah, Reeve, hi. I'm supposed to be escorting Rufus to the parade right now so he can meet with the VIP seat holders, but something's come up and I can't make it to the parade. Do you think you could. . .?"

"Yeah, sure," the older man said, thankful for the interruption. He assessed where he was. "Call him back and tell him I'll be there in ten minutes, no more, okay?"

Tseng said he would, and with a click, Reeve was back where he had been before. He turned the car around sharply, ignoring the minivan he nearly hit, and started the drive back toward ShinRa's current headquarters. A few seconds after that, his phone rang again; one of the sponsors needed his advice on something or other.

Reeve smiled, thinking that ShinRa might fall down without him.

This wasn't the day for that, though, and he knew it when the parade started exactly on time. Reno found himself as bored as he might ever get, alone in a tank that he couldn't even play with, surrounded by trumpets blaring, people shouting, and knowing that Rufus ShinRa was right on top of him. He debated gunning it, but remembered that despite all the advances they'd made since the war, tanks were tanks and he wouldn't really be going that much faster than he already was.

He hated the job.

There was no radio, he couldn't hear the announcements being made outside, Rude wasn't even allowed to ride with him because he was busy with security, Scarlet had been too busy to acknowledge him all day, the rookie had gone missing – well, he didn't really care about that – Tseng had been too distant to mess with, and he'd lost a perfectly good truck to a rigged game of poker. He had a feeling that one of those men had had a gun under the table, though, and decided not to mention that if one person in the game had three aces, the person next to him certainly couldn't have a pair.

Reno thought about pulling the steering wheel wildly from side to side, but remembered how little room he already had on either side and decided not to risk crushing a few spectators. He hit the steering wheel lightly, tapping a beat to keep himself entertained, then stopped. He narrowed his eyes and suddenly moved his head to the right, barely missing the throwing star that lodged itself in the thick glass window in front of him.

"How the fuck did you get in here?" he had time to ask. He knew he couldn't just abandon the parade, for the sake of the public, and jammed his mag-rod between the seat and the pedal so the tank would keep an easy, straight path. The lights were low, but he had the benefit of Mako to see the samurai standing at the foot of the hatch ladder, ready to take his head off if he had the chance.

This one, too, tried to make a speech. "You, as a Turk, have wronged my people in the past, and for that I've come to take –"

Reno fired a shot, but it hit the breastplate of the samurai with a metallic clang. Apparently Godo had stepped up his defense since Rude had gotten that one over the balcony – or maybe this one was from a different unit – or –

"Oh, shut the fuck up," the redhead barked, whether to his new opponent or himself. He kicked the one of the knives out of its ankle holster at the Wutain, not too upset when it was brushed away like a fly, and slid the other into his hand. This one was far more familiar to his grip. The samurai seemed incredulous ( he was wearing a mask, of course, but he took a step back when he saw that Reno intended to come at his full-length sword with a seven-inch switchblade. "What, you don't think that I can pull this off? I've been killin' people with this since I was on the streets."

The samurai didn't move. "This is a sword made of the finest steel in Wutai, blessed by high priestess Yushi, sharpened with a diamond from Da-Chao, soaked in the waters of the most holy point in the river that flows through the empire. It's never been used before, sharp enough to split a man's hair in half, and –"

The struggle was short. Reno did take a pretty good slice to the leg, but this was his knife, his company's tank, and his town, so he'd be damned before he let some Wute take it. He only had to take his mad-rod off the pedal once, for the final blow, and the float stopped briefly before he was back in his seat, bandaging his leg with a nearby kit while driving as calmly as ever. The parade was over shortly after the rusty smell of blood started to get to him, and he climbed out of the tank with a little hassle.

Rufus was on his case immediately. The redhead focused his thoughts on the rookie, standing nor far behind in a dress. She'd obviously been riding on the float with Rufus as some kind of eye candy, and Reno had to admit that she didn't look bad. When the blonde boy had finally stopped complaining about the stop of the float and how they'd almost been run into, Reno told him to check the tank out for himself and hobbled over to Reeve.

"How the fuck did he get into the tank, Reeve?" he hissed. He was genuinely upset that such a security failure had occurred, and frankly, it was nice to see Reno taking something seriously, as annoying as it was at the same time. "If anyone else had been driving, do you know what would've happened? Kidnapping, that's what. Kidnapping and probably assassination. What the hell happened?"

Reeve was rubbing his temples. He hadn't seen the mess for himself, but it didn't take too many guesses to know what had gone on inside that tank. "I know, Reno, I know. And I'm sorry. But these are the royal guards of Wutai, Reno; certainly –"

"Certainly my dick!" the other shouted. "We're ShinRa, Incorporated! We've got the tightest security in the world and suddenly there's a samurai on the presidential float on inauguration day! I mean, seriously, what the shit, Reeve?"

"What do you want me to do, Reno?" The other man was helpless. "Blow up Wutai, is that it? What the hell are you getting at?"

Reno paused to let the idea run through his head. He certainly would've had fun blowing up the port town, but there were more serious matters at hand. "Think about it, Reeve. A Wutai elite gets into the presidential float on inauguration day. Waltzes right in here and tries to pull off at least one assassination. Doesn't that sound a little suspicious to you?" Reeve took a minute to catch on, but when he did, he tried to protest. "No, Reeve, don't." Reno pulled him closer and whispered, "Check into the fuckin' rookie. Something's up." He walked away as quickly as possible, lighting a cigarette as he did.

As if Tseng didn't have enough to worry about when Reeve relayed that message, his phone was suddenly bombarded that night with dozens of flower and pizza orders. When he got back to his desk, he saw black-and-white photographs that some spectators had taken laid out on it. Six men in the parade carried two banners with Tseng's personal number on them, one disguised as a floral company and one as a pizza place.

He as going to raise hell in the morning.


End file.
